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THE COMPOSER

THE NEW YORK f47J|'

PUBLIC LIBRARY

AS'K^'R. LJ.NOX AND
•ILL") FN }■ ^UNDATIONS
P L

The Composer

By

Agnes and Egerton Castle

Authors of "Panther's Cub," "The Pride of Jennico,
-Rose of the World," "Young April
U Youth but Knew," etc.

»

»

«<

Frontispiece by Charies S. Chapman

.c

Gabden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1911

I 1>J.H 1 I i.i" .\ Jl Y

82690B

R 1H40 L

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, XNCLUDZNG THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING TEtB SCANDINAVIAN

COFYRIGHT, IQII, BY AGNES AND EGERTON CASTLE

COPYRIGHT, XQIO, XQII, BY BUTTERICK PX7BUSHING COMPANY

PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND UNDER THE TITLE Of TEE LOST IPHIGENIA

It

ti-

XBE OOONTRT UFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

THE COMPOSER

I

Sir

ft

>

THE COMPOSER

CHAPTER I

"Johnny," said Lady Caroline Pountney, "I want
you to take me down to Warborough House."

"Oh, I say!" said Johnny.

It was not that he had any solid objection, but the
average young man of his set ejaculated "Oh, I say!"
on every opportunity. And Johnny was a very average
young man indeed.

"Do, Johnny," said his godmother, coaxingly. "Lady
Warborough made such a point of my going. And it's so
lonely here, in these wretched lodgings. London people
are much too busy to spare a moment for an old woman
with a sprained knee. I'd go by train, only I'm such a
cripple." She broke oflF. She saw relenting in Johnny's
gray eyes which had never been very obdurate. "I'll
get ready at once," she exclaimed with alacrity.

"Well, if I must, I must, I suppose."

Sir John Holdfast resigned himself with perfect equa-
nimity; rose and extended a broad, sunburnt hand to
assist the lady in her eflFort to hoist herself out of her
chair. He further supported her filially to the door,
wondering as he did so, how any one afflicted with so

3

4 THE COMPOSER

much difficulty in locomotion could hanker to find herself
in the middle of a distracted crowd. It was fun enough
at Warborough if you could roam the garden with a pretty
girl; but, to be able to get Lady Caroline from motor to
tea-room, and from tea-room back to motor, it was as
much as the most sanguine could expect.

"You're a dear boy, Johnny," said she, "and I'll leave
your wife all my emeralds when I die."

She turned upon him a rich brown eye, with so melting
an expression that he thought she was going to kiss him;
and he precipitately fled, explaining that he would just
see if his shover had enough in the tank to tootle them
down to Warborough, and that he would be back in a
jiflfy to help her down the stairs.

But the toUet even of an old woman with a sprained
knee is apt to take time — perhaps more time, indeed,
than that of agile eighteen. Young Holdfast had dis-
posed of a considerable number of cigarettes; had gazed
out upon the passing motors and carriages — quiet
Clarges Street in the season has its aristocratic traffic —
and, this' pastime palling, had betaken himself aimlessly
to his godmother's books. He had mastered the sporting
page of the Times (sighing the while for a "Pink 'Un")
before that good lady reappeared, radiant in nodding
plumes of mauve and rustling silks of the same shade.

Such a toilet inevitably demanded the closing of the
car; but Johnny resigned himself, with the unalterable
placidity characteristic of him, and they set oflf m a
humour to match the incomparable June day.

Lady Caroline Pountney loved smart, good-looking

• • <

THE COMPOSER 5

young men. She loved Johnny with special affection
besides — a childless woman's regard for the only piece
of lusty youth that she might consider as belonging to her.
As for him — ^well, the young man was not given to intro-
spection; could hardly be said, indeed, at this twenty-
fourth year of his life, to think much more than does
a healthy dog. But if his reflections could have been
analyzed, they would have been found to run in some such
guise: "It's jolly lonely for the poor old girl, after all!
And it's worth being stuffed for a bit to see her so awfully
bucked up! . . . .Daresay she'll hook on to some-
body and let me get away. . . Ripping to-day under
the trees, with a pretty girl, strawberries, cymbals and
all that.'*

The car duly wheeled in between the great guardant
lions into the cedar avenue which is the most noted feature
of Warborough House park. Sir John Holdfast, the crook
of his cane to his lips, gazed contentedly out across the
shadows of the avenue upon the golden green spaces be-
yond. A curve of the road brought them in view of the
terraces and the noble pillared house. A vision bright
with colour; from the stone vases blazing with geraniums
to the delicate tints of dresses and parasols in the shifting
crowd and the subdued glory of the rose arches against
the green lawns. A vagrant gust of music caught his ear.
He felt an odd stir within him; something like the
tingle of excitement with which his blood was wont to
greet the first cry of the hounds on a hunting mom.

Lady Caroline, reminiscing beside him upon her initial
garden party at Warborough, rambled on unheeded:

6 THE COMPOSER

"I wore white muslin, with a blue sash — so silly,
being brunette, and cerise was my colour. But my
mother would have it. *There is only one dress for a young
girl/ she used to say, *and that's white muslin with a blue
sash.' ... I was just eighteen and quite lovely, dear !
When my mother brought me up to Lady Warborough —
that was the grandmother of the present man, Johnny —
she just took my hand, and looked at my mother and
said: *Je vous fais rrum compliment t* And Dizzy was
standing beside her, and he said: 'A Titian • .
dressed by Reynolds!* He did indeed, Johnny!"

"Oh, I say," said Sir John, "what a pretty girl!"

The car had drawn up below the terrace steps; and
over the balustrade a face had looked down upon him as
they swept past. He leaned out — the open window
was on his side, but the face was gone. A flash of bright
eyes, a smile of red parted, eager lips; a face delicate and
pearl-hued, illumined by that smile. Honest Johnny,
twenty-four, felt a little giddy as he flung his long legs
out of the motor.

" Grood gracious, child, what are you gaping at? Aren't
you going to help me down?"

There was some difficulty in getting Lady Caroline
up the steps to where the hostess stood with her smiling
welcome; but Johnny accomplished the task manfully.
Lady Warborough, tall, gracious, still youthful enough to
be known as young Lady Warborough in spite of her
grown-up daughters, received them both as if the whole
entertainment had been planned in their honour. Lady
Caroline was an old friend of the family; and Johnny

n

THE COMPOSER 7

was a cousin — indeed, he was cousin to most people —
and something of a favourite besides. She left her post
a moment to establish them at the nearest tea-table in
the crowded hall.

With all his mind outside on the terrace, pursuing
"that face," the young man resigned himself to the con-
scientious feeding of his godmother. When, however,
this latter "hooked on" to one acquaintance after another,
and yet maintained a firm grasp upon him, even his
enduring serenity began to give way.

"No, Johnny, you must not leave me. My dear boy,
you forget I'm a cripple — yes. Lord Hadersham, wasn't
it stupid? I twisted my knee at the Foreign Office recep-
tion, last month." As a matter of fact, she had done the
deed at Euston Station. But, if we are not picturesque
in our social talk, where are we? "Agonies, agonies!

— Only for dear Count d'Eichwald " (It had not

been the ambassador in question but a benevolent |)orter
who had picked her up; but let it pass.) "Yes, dear,
I'm here. Isn't it wonderfid? My godson brought me
down in his car. He insisted. . . . You know Sir
John Holdfast? — Yes, poor Amy's son; he's got her
eyes, hasn't he? — Johnny, this is Mrs. Mauprat. . . .
Is your girl here? Yes, do have tea with us. Johnny,
bring that chair for Mrs. Mauprat."

Johnny obeyed, but remained standing as if in absent-
mindedness. His eye was upon the open doorway,
measuring the distance for flight.

Mrs. Mauprat surveyed him a moment or two with an
appraising glance. She was a hard-featured Scotch-

8 THE COMPOSER

woman, the mother of a bevy of unmarried daughters
and possessed a keen scent for eligible young men. While
her hard eye roamed over the unconscious youth, her
mind revolved. . . . "A fine old place in Yorkshire,
a castle on the Border, and coal or something in
Durham. . . . Where is that tiresome child? — I
told her to keep within sight!"

"Sit down, Johnny," said Lady Caroline, anxiously.

Then Mrs. Mauprat spoke. "Yes, Caroline, I brought
my second girl with me." She looked round, as if
expecting to find her at her shoidder. "Dear me, what
can have become of her? — Sir John, you are standing
up; tell me, do you see any one with a white muslin and
a yellow sash on the terrace ? You coidd not mistake
her: I am positive she is the only girl in white muslin
with a yellow sash here."

"My mother always made me wear white muslin with
a blue sash," began Lady Caroline with much unction.
"The first time I ever came to this place, Dizzy was here.
Dizzy was standing just there beside our hostess — he
was still Dizzy then. ..."

"Shall I go and look for your daughter?" cried Sir
John with such alacrity that the harassed mother turned
upon him, first with surprise, and then with a positively
melting expression.

"Look for her!" exclaimed Lady Caroline from the
midst of her reminiscences, with extreme tartness, "look
for a creature he has never seen, in this seething crowd!
— My dear Mary — I don't mean it personally, buf,
what a wild-goose chase!"

THE COMPOSER 9

"He can't mistake her," said her dear Mary, setting
her countenance into lines of rigid firmness.

"No — I can't mistake her," echoed Johnny with
extreme cheerfuhiess. "White muslin and a blue sash."

A scream of "yellow!" pursued him, just as a success-
ful dive brought him out of range of his godmother's
extended hand.

Negotiating the tea-tables and the blocking groups,
he reached the garden terrace in safety. . . . "She
can't run after me, poor old girl . . . and I haven't
got a sash tied behind, thanks be!" He drew a long
breath. "George, what a stew!"

He made his way toward that point of the terrace
where he had seen the laughing face, arrested two or three
times by the demure: "How do you do, Sir John?" of
some ballroom partner, or a siuprised: "Hallo, Johnny!"
from some polo-field comrade. — It was characteristic
that he should be Johnny to all men upon the shortest
acquaintance.

The particular comer where the vision had flashed upon
him was now occupied by a fat old gentleman and a fat
old lady. Johnny caught a scrap of their discourse, as he
paused to reconnoitre.

"Yes, the pigmies are in the summer-house; but
I don't advise you to go all that way to see them.
General. I have been and I can't say I think much of
them."

"No, now, didn't you?"

"No, General — " firmly. "They're so very small."

Johnny ran down the steps without a smile. He had

10 THE COMPOSER

seen a large hat, wreathed with pale roses, beneath him^
and plunged across the slopes; only to shy away, with a
friendly smile, from the eager greeting of a Yorkshire
neighbour's daughter. His behaviour was not unlike
that of a dog seeking his master in a crowd — oflE again
on a fresh scent, with a wag of the tail and a sniff of
renewed energy. He passed the beguilements of the
strawberry tents and the clashing appeal of the Hun-
garians; it was only when he reached the steps of the
summer-house and met an amused stream emerging
from the contemplation of the pigmies at tea, that he
came upon the object of his search.

His honest heart gave a leap. If Johnny had been
introspective, he might have reflected, and drawn con-
clusions from this singular portent.

She was standing somewhat apart from a group of
laughing girls.

"No," she was saying very decidedly, "I don't want
to go and see the poor little wretches. I always thought
it very rude to stare at the animals in the Zoo at
mealtime."

Her voice had a full ring that struck John Holdfast
as extraordinarily diflferent from any he had ever heard
before; and its utterance was so clear and measured as
scarcely to seem quite English, though there was no
alien accent to be detected. Now that he could contem-
plate her at his ease, what struck him most about her
were the black, straight-drawn brows, which, as she stood,
frowning slightly, made almost a bar across the white
forehead.

M*WI

THE COMPOSER 11

''Oh, but do come, Sarolta! " coaxed a rollicking looking
maiden, whose complexion was not innocent of artifice,
and who had an air of assurance that woidd have graced
a dnun-major. Johnny knew her well by sight: she was
a niece of Lord Warborough — a recent appearance
in London — but "not his sort," and he had suc-
cessfully avoided making her acquaintance. "Billy
Morton has promised to meet me up there; and he
says he'll make love to one of the little wives. It is
killing! The little husband gets blue in the face and
jabbers, and wants to stick him with the fruit knife.
— It's just too funny!"

"What woidd the little wife do, if you made love to
the little husband, Eileen?" cried a companion.

"Oh, you make me sick!" cried Johnny's vision. She
turned on her heel and set oflE by herself across the
turf with a rapid free step. He noticed a flutter
of primrose ribbon from her waist. Her skirt, too,
blown back by the swing of her passage, was, he saw,
of some filmy white stuff, that might well be muslin.
Was ever young man so favoured by Fate?

As he strode after her, he was conscious of an increase
of that remarkable agitation — mixed exhilaration, and
something else. Not fear — Johnny had never been
afraid — but a shiver in the blood, agreeable rather than
otherwise, such as a fellow feels when he is about to meet
a sporting danger.

At the sound of his rapid steps behind her she stopped
and turned round. Johnny took off his hat.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered, while the colour

12 THE COMPOSER

rushed hotly to his forehead, "I have been sent to look
for you."

"Indeed?" A smile came into those luminous eyes
that a moment before had shot such an unencouraging
gleam at sight of his unfamiliar face.

"She told me I could not mistake you . . . that
you were the only young lady with a yellow sash and white
muslin.*'

"Indeed!" The girl lifted a fold of the diaphanous
fabric that floated about her. "Are you sure she did
not say chiffon? Come now, didn't she? — She called it
shiffong, I daresay. So you thought muslin safer."

Safer! Could such a word apply to anything con-
nected with this entrancing being! No delightful peril,
not even the only steeple-chase he had ever won, had
set his pulses quivering like this. He laughed inconse-
quently.

"Shiffong, of course, I should have said." He cor-
rected himself in all innocence. She laughed — and
Johnny was a lost man.

He became so absorbed in a hypnotised contemplation
of the dimples at the comer of her square-cut mouth, of
the adorable manner in which she contracted her eyes,
of even the little wrinkle upon her short nose, that
when she unexpectedly grew serious again, and asked
him quite sharply: "Well, what does she want with
me? " he was absolutely at a loss for a reply.

"If my aunt sent you after me," she cried impatiently,
"I suppose she had some message?"

Johnny was on the point of explaining, surprised, that

THE COMPOSER 13

he was the ambassador of a mother, not of an aunt,
when the whole pitfall of the truth opened before him.
He just saved himself from toppling in, by an unwonted
mental eflFort. There were then, at least two yellow sashes
at Warborough this afternoon, after all! How indeed
could he have thought that such a creature as this might
be daughter to Mrs. Mauprat? But he was not going to
throw away the best piece of luck that had ever come
his way for any paltry pandering to veracity.

"I rather think," he said slowly and solemnly, "she
wanted me to bring you back to tea with her."

The marked disfavour of the "Oh!" with which this
announcement was received encouraged him to continue.

"Tea," he repeated with emphasis, "in the hall over
there. Such a stew as you never felt! And everybody
talking together, and standing in each other's way!"
His blushes had left him. "Your aunt," he went on,
"has got hold of my old godmother — and once they've
got you, they'll never let you go; they'll talk and talk
and talk till it's time to go."

"I will not accompany you back to tea," announced
the young lady with great formality and decision.

"I wouldn't," said the delighted young man.

A mischievous light danced in her eyes.

"You'll explain it very politely," she hinted. "Say
I have had tea."

"Oh, I say!"

"What then?"

A bold and brilliant idea flashed upon him.

"Look here, do let me take you for a turn on the

14 THE COMPOSER

lake. Oh, I say, do! It is jolly. There's a ripping

canoe."

She hesitated, glanced toward the house, toward the
straggling crowd; and then down the green glade where,
between parted bushes starred with bloom, the waters
glimmered. Then she gave a quaint nod.

"H^ bien — vogue la gaUrer*

He had small knowledge of French, but her compliance
was unmistakable.

He helped her into the canoe ^she laughed to feel into
what a fragile bark she was trusting herself; and she
had a little approving smile to note his balance, and the
mastery of his hand as he wielded the paddle and pushed
oflF.

Both were silent for a while. He brought her jealously
away toward the extremity of the lake into a solitude of
still waters, patched with dreaming lilies, bordered with
overhanging willows, mirroring a glorious sky. She
leant her chin on her clasped hands, and looked out
across Johnny into some distance far beyond the lake
horizon, her eyes dark with thought. Johnny looked
at her. She did not seem to mind that. Indeed it would
have required ultra sensitiveness to find objection in a
gaze at once so guileless and so earnest.

Johnny was actually thinking hard — wondering
who she might be, whence she had come. . . .
Vaguely he knew that her speech was different from
that of his compatriots. . • . She seemed on inti-
mate terms with the Warborough set, if one might judge
by the tone of the conversation outside the summer-

THE COMPOSER 15

house. . . . How was it that he had never seen her
before ?

He was making up for lost time now — noting every
detail of those pretty looks that had ravished him at first
glance. Beauty it might not have seemed to another. But
the most critical could hardly have denied the arresting
charm of the girl's face; its singular vividness of expression;
its unusual combination of refinement and vigour.

"A penny for your thoughts," he said at last.

She started a little; frowned a little, and then smiled.

"What would you do with them if you had them, I
wonder?"

Her tone was not in the least coquettish; rather
patronizing, such as the schoolgirl might use toward the
schoolboy.

"I'd — oh, I'd be pleased, and honoured, you know —

and I'd " What the dickens was a fellow to say to

such a question ! Then he beamed all over his good young
face. "I'd take awful care of them, you know," he said
upon a humorous inspiration.

She nodded at him amusedly.

"I'm sure you woidd — wrap them up in tissue paper
perhaps — But you wouldn't understand them."

"Try me!" he cried eagerly.

She shook her head.

"No, no. There's a poem I read once that says our
thoughts are birds that come and go. Mine are wild-
birds — they fly where they like. Why, if I tried to
catch one and give it to you, it would slip through my
fingers and be gone, so far, so far!"

16 THE COMPOSER

At her sudden wild gesture, the canoe rocked. "Above
all," she exclaimed in pretended alarm, "do not thxow
me into the water. If you threw me into the water you
would not know what you were murdering."

"Shouldn't I just?" he exclaimed with heat, and then
sagely added: "I'd pick you out all right."

"No," she said, with a provoking look, "that's just
what you might not be able to do. Oh, you might save
my body, right enough, but not my soul! . . . Now
I've puzzled you. Take me back to the shore, at once.
My soul is too precious to be risked in a cockle-shell
that rocks if one moves one's hands. Take me back!"
she repeated imperiously; and those eyes, of indefinable
colour, that seemed dark and light, as her mood varied,
shot fire upon him now.

The canoe rocked indeed as he drew it to the shore and
she stood up to spring out. He was not sorry for this,
because he had to clasp her hand so closely; and even,
at one moment, to fling an arm about her.

"Thank you," she said briefly. "It has been nice —
and not too long to be spoilt!" She shook out her misty
skirt, glanced down at a lichen stain, shrugged her
shoulders; and, one foot poised on flight, gazed back at
him.

"I don't even know your name," she said.

He lifted his hat:

"I am Sir John Holdfast."

Then her sudden laugh broke out again. "Holdfast?"
she repeated, as if the name were a joke.

With that she was gone from him, running like a nymph

THE COMPOSER 17

up the slope, leaving the echo of her laughter behind
her. His impulse was to run in pursuit; but the habit
of convention, a certain inarticulate sense of chivalry,
arrested him. He went quickly enough after her, how-
ever, detennined not to lose sight of the flutter of white
and yellow. The flush which her mirth had called to his
cheek still burned there.

Johnny lost all trace of his lady at last, in the con-
flicting stream of terrace and garden; but, conjecturing
that under the impression he had mendaciously conveyed,
she would be likely to seek her chaperon in the tea-room,
he proceeded thither himself at a more sober gait.

Here unfortunately he was arrested. A nodding
plume of lilac feathers became violently agitated; and
Lady Caroline's piercing tones hailed him in accents
of bitter reproach.

"Johnny, Johnny, Johnny — oh, Johnny!"

A score of amused faces turned in his direction; it
was useless for the poor young man to pretend uncon-
sciousness. Almost every one here knew who "Johnny*'
was.

"Hallo, Johnny," cried one of Lady Warborough's
sons-in-law, "what have you been up to now?"

"Yes, indeed!" echoed his terrible godmother. She
was reproachf id, yet had lost nothing of her good-humour.
"What has he been doing? Just look at his blushes! —
Please bring him over to me, Mr. Penrhyn. You know
I'm responsible for his moral welfare."

Society at play is very lightly entertained. Johnny

18 THE COMPOSER

found himself the easy butt of an easy wit. David
Penrhyn duly propelled him toward the table where
the lame lady was still installed; and he seemed to con-
sider the proceedings worth an immense amount of
laughter.

"Sit down, Johnny/* said Lady Caroline in resistless
tones of command. "You've got to take me away in
ten minutes; and out of my sight again you do not budge."

Johnny mopped his brow and cast a distraught eye
about him. A blue frock, a green frock, a garment all
over zigzags, another all stripes. Not a sign of the white
chiflfon with the yellow ribbon. He could have groaned
aloud.

"Dear me, how odd you look!" commented his tor-
mentor. "Mary Mauprat went off in a towering huff.
Of course you did not even look for her wild goose. Barn-
door goose were a great deal nearer the mark. I never
saw such a plain girl in my days! Image of poor Mary!**

"I beg your pardon," said he vaguely. "Was there
not a primrose glimmer yonder? Surely yes!" He
sprang to his feet.

"Good gracious!" began Lady Caroline testily, then
*broke off. Her hostess was approaching; she was
resting one hand on the shoulder of a slender white-clad
girl, and smiling down at her as she came; and the
girl was smiling back from under the shadow of a large,
rose-wreathed hat.

"Help me up," said Lady Caroline. "I may as well
say good-bye now." And while an effusive farewell
took place between the ladies, Johnny had yet one

THE COMPOSER 19

more delirious moment with her whom he only knew as
Sarolta.

"You mustn't stop me," she said to him. "I haven't
found my aunt yet."

"Oh, I say, let me help you. — What is she like?"

The girl stared. Then Johnny, realizing his slip, felt
himself grow purple. She held him a moment severely
under her gaze. The pupils of her strange eyes seemed
to darken and brighten under conflicting thoughts;
then, all at once, the compressed lips broke into laughter.
Yet, even as she laughed, her movement away from him
had a determined finality.

"No, no, 'pon honour!" he exclaimed, in a wild desire
to retain her. "It was a true bill, I give you my word.
I was sent to look for some one with a yellow sash. 'Pon
honour!"

While she paused again, not imkindly, her gaze wan-
derea linterestedly beyond him; then lit up.

"Ah, there she is!"

With that unexpected quickness of hers, she had darted
from his side as she spoke; and he now saw her seize hold
of a stout woman whose back was toward them, and
heard her cry "At last!"

The back view of Miss Sarolta's aunt was large and
shinily clad. The front view, which was inmiediately
presented caused the young man a sharp sense of
surprise and disillusion. From the crown of her black
head to the point of her toe-capped boot, his vision's
"aunt" was unmistakably Jewish, unmistakably not a
lady; more, she was aggressively vulgar. How had she

20 THE COMPOSER

come to be included among Lady Warboroug- s guests ?
How, in the name of heaven, could there be any connec-
tion between her and Sarolta? But the check was mo-
mentary. Johnny recovered himself: what did it matter?
Sarolta might have forty aunts in iridescent beadings,
with shiny ringlets bobbing above drooping noses, she
would still be, what she was — incomparable. He would
be introduced to the aunt of Sarolta.

As he came up to them, he was aware that they were
talking rapidly together, in odd guttural sounds that
surely did not belong to French; nor, he thought, to
German.

Upon his bashfully-uttered request, the girl, with
perfect unconcern, performed the desired ceremony:

" Tdntchen, this is Sir John Holdfast — Mrs. Mosen-
thal."

A fat kid-gloved hand was instantly offered, which he
shook with a cordiality increased by the knowledge of
some quizzical eyes about him.

"Lovely, here, ain't it?" said the lady, meltingly.

The subsequent observation anent "the Marchioness
of Warborough" was interrupted by the advance of that
personage herself.

"I am sorry to say, Johnny, that Lady Caroline is
going. You will find her at the head of the steps."

Sir John hesitated. A wild idea of oflFering seats in
his car to Sarolta and the . . . lady was struggling
in his mind, when that person fortunately spoke.

"Well, I'll have to be trotting myself, I suppose.
Good-bye, Marchioness, good-bye, Sarolta."

THE COMPOSER 21

"Aren't you going back with your aunt?" asked Sir
John, disappointedly.

"No, indeed," said Lady Warborough, taking the girl's
hand, and slipping it within her arm. "We are keeping
Sarolta. We are going to have a great treat to-night,
I assure you, Mrs. Mosenthal."

"Well, and I think you will, your ladyship."

Mrs. Mosenthal delivered herself doughtily, almost with
a kind of defiance in her voice. Johnny was bewildered.
Elementary manners forbade him to leave his lame old
godmother one moment longer unattended. Moreover,
he was obviously dismissed. There was farewell in Lady
Warborough's smile; and a certain air about the little
group of having private matters to discuss. Yet he
could not forgo lingering for yet another word:

"Shall I never see you again?" he said in Sarolta's
ear.

She looked at him vaguely. Then:

"I really don't know," she said, with a laugh. But
to this cruel phrase added another — "Who knows?
Are you going to Mrs. Morton's concert next week? I
shall be there."

He had not the slightest acquaintance with Mrs. Mor-
ton but he answered bravely that he would "turn up" —
and registered the vow, as he hurried back to his neglected
duty, that no power on earth would keep him from that
promised place of meeting.

CHAPTER n

Mrs. James Mobton, the handsome ambitious wife of
the city magnate — whose father's name it was whis-
pered had been Mordecai — gave handsome ambitious
parties» which, winnowed year by year, had moreover
become very select entertainments indeed. Mrs. Morton
had wisely fixed upon music as the best medium for
attaining social success; and her concerts were now reck-
oned among the season's events.

Music was not in Sir John Holdfast's line; and though,
from April to the end of July, cards for dances were
showered upon him thick as Vallombrosa leaves, nobody
had ever dreamed of sending him a card for the big man-
sion in Carlton House Terrace. He had no diflSculty,
however, in obtaining the desired invitation. Young
men in Sir John Holdfast's position rarely find any
London door closed to them which they wish open.

He hardly knew himself during the intervening few
days that separated him from the moment when he was
to see her again. His dreams were haunted by her face;
his waking moments were spent in futile endeavours to
obtain information about her.

"I say," he would ask the most rSpandus youths of
his acquaintance, "have you ever come across any girl
called Sarolta? — no end of a pretty girl," he would add

22 """

THE COMPOSER 23

in an off-hand manner that was belied by the earnestness
of his gaze. "Eyebrows that meet nearly right across,
don't you know."

Some were serious, and some jocular; but none of
assistance.

"Might be Russian," opined the F. 0. young man, in
virtue of his superior knowledge of languages.

"Don't have anything to do with her, Johnny, my boy,"
warned an experienced Coldstreamer. "Eyebrows right
across? — devil of a jealous creature!"

"Hallo," cried a third, sympathetically, "got it bad, old
man? " This was an Eton comrade and a particular crony.

So Johnny dropped his indifferent air, and tapped
himself ruefully over the region of the heart.

"In the bull's-eye!" he groaned.

He was almost the first guest to arrive at Mrs. Mor-
ton's; and vaguely holding the Japanese- vellum pro-
gramme pressed upon him by a powdered footman,
promptly ensconced himself in a coign of vantage to
watch each arrival.

Many he knew — among them Lady Warborough, who
swept in with the royal group. There were a number of
pretty married women. There were some young men
of the type he had himself generally avoided: dis-
tinguished dilettarUiy who wore ties of which Johnny
did not approve and their hair in what he called ringlets
— which meant half an inch longer than his own thick,
close shorn locks. There were at least three ambassadors
and their wives: mindful of the F. O. youth's dictum,
Johnny watched eagerly to see if any of these dignitaries

24 THE COMPOSER

should be followed by the light, lithe figure that had
taken possession of his thoughts. But vainly. There
were indeed very few girls present.

After a while, to his disgust, he found himself obliged to
enter the music room and take a chair. Mrs. Morton never
had more guests than she could seat in comfort. He was
imprisoned between two strangers and the music began.

Nearly every place was occupied; yet there was no
sign of her. Had she only been mocking him? Had she
changed her mind at the last moment? Was she, perhaps,
ill? If he only could even get near Lady Warborough
. . . but she was at the top of the room, beside
the Princess. And, even when the first piece was over,
Johnny found that you were not expected to move. He
looked disconsolately at his programme: there were
names upon it which (had he only known) ought to have
made him consider himself privileged indeed.

Vaguely he surmised that the fat, pale-faced man, who
played such a long, tiresome affair on the violin, must be
"an awful swell at it." This other, too, who bounded
on to the platform and looked round with fierce eyes,
curling a truculent moustache before opening what
Johnny thought the biggest mouth he had ever seen,
was probably a no less distinguished personage; for he
heard a murmur run round the decorous room, and when
the song was finished, at least ten people in his vicinity
remarked, "Divine!"

Johnny, in a deeper depression of spirits than he had
ever known in his prosperous existence and tired of
craning his neck toward the rose-wreathed doorway.

^THE COMPOSER 25

wearfly counted the remaining "turns" he would have to
sit through before he could escape. One more froid the
violinist; two more from the celebrated tenor; then a
quatuor dHnstruments anciens — whatever that might
mean. And then, divided by what was apparently a
pause, a Miss Vaneck was to sing three songs: "The
Little Birch Tree," "Oh, My Heart!" and "How Do
You Know? "by Sir Arnold Pringle, accompanied by the
composer. . . • The names meant nothing to him
but further boredom. Well, he would steal away in
that pause. . . . No, he wouldn't, not while there
was a soul left in the room; not while there was a ghost
of a chance of Sarolta walking in.

Some people did evaporate: royalty having retired
to supper with a dozen distinguished intimates, among
whom, of course, was Lady Warborough. Meanwhile
the commoner herd — if such a word could apply to
Mrs. Morton's rigid selection of guests — partook of
elaborate refreshments downstairs.

Johnny went with the rest, but was too cross to eat.

"Have you heard the new singer?" some one said near
him, as he drank that glass of soda water which was all
his injured feeling could condescend to.

"I hate new singers," said the man addressed, who was,
though Johnny did not know this, the most distinguished
musical critic of the day. "I should be oflF now, only
I positively daren't — Lady Warborough would never
forgive me."

"She's bringing her forward, isn't she?" said the
interested lady, helping herself to a quail.

26 THE COMPOSER

"She is — and two or three others. Oh, don't let's
talk about it! I know what it will be. I'm sorry for
Mrs. Morton — 'pon honour I am — to have to give us
such a dessert after divine Barolo. Fact is, she had a
crucial disappointment to-night — she expected Lothnar."

"Lothnar!" ejaculated the lady, in the awed tones of
the lion huntress, pronouncing the name of an unattain-
able celebrity. "You don't say so: Lothnar! How
could she get him? I thought he went nowhere."

"She didn't, you see," grinned the other; "there was a
talk of his coming to London, and Costanza promised to
try and bring him. Old Mordecai — beg pardon, Mrs.
Morton — was ready with a thumping cheque toward
those Frankheim schemes. It wouldn't have been bad
business for Lothnar, but he never came over after all;
changed his plans at the last moment. Poor Mrs. Mor-
ton had to fall back on Lady Warborough and royalty,
and that entailed Lady Warboroughs's prot6g6e — d'you
see? That is how it is done: she daren't refuse, you
know. Rather a brilliant idea, though, having supper
in between; puts one in good-humour. Have some more
fizz?"

"Oh, but Lothnar, Lothnar! To think that he might
have been here!" sighed she. "Do you know, Mr.
Christie, I positively made three pilgrimages to Frank-
heim to try and meet him? But it was all in vain. He
lives shut up in that old house for months at a time, and
every gate in the park is double-locked. And the gate-
keepers — oh, the gatekeepers!"

"He's a rum devil," mused Mr. Christie.

THE COMPOSER 27

Johnny went back to his seat, wondering who on earth
this rum devil was, and why any one should be so anxious
to meet him. Almost every hope of Sarolta's belated
arrival had left him; but he was doggedly resolved to
depart only with the last guest. If he met her again —
he must meet her again — he would be able to tell her
that he, at least, had been faithful.

He saw royalty reappear, benevolent and expectant; saw
how Lady Warborough was again summoned to take her
place at its side, and how animatedly they were convers-
ing. Then, all at once he had, in the doorway by which
the artists entered upon the platform, a momentary
vision of a countenance that was, yes, unmistakably,
that of Mrs. Mosenthal!

His heart leaped; he stared, amazed, almost painfully
expectant. A lank young man ran up to the piano, spread
some music sheets, and then ushered toward the key-
board a smiling, dapper individual with grizzled hair, red
face, and pointed Moustache, who looked far more like
a retired cavalry officer than any one even remotely
connected with music. This was, of course. Sir Arnold
Pringle. He bowed genially, sat down, and the next
moment it was Sarolta who walked quietly out of the
inner room to the platform, and stood facing them all —
Sarolta herself!

She was in white. Her dusky hair was tied back with
black ribbon into a kind of girlish knot; she seemed even
younger than at Warborough House and very pale. A sort
of dimness came over Johnny's sight; when it cleared
he saw that her lips were trembling.

28 THE COMPOSER

The man at the piano struck a chord, and looked at
her over his shoulder. She looked back at him and
nodded. And then Johnny became aware that her hands,
hanging down in front of her, were tightly clasped, and
that, in spite of that, they were trembling too.

"She's frightened!" he said to himself. And only at
that moment, so taken aback had he been by the unex-
pected apparition, did he realize that Sarolta was Miss
Vaneck of the programme. Lady Warborough's new
singer.

There is no denying the fact that it was a shock to
Johnny. The connection with Mrs. Mosenthal, their
presence at Warborough House, all was now explained.
His nymph, his divinity, was just a girl with a voice,
who was going to sing for her Uving.

But the next moment a high, clear note, something
birdlike and sweet and piercing, rang out into the room;
and Johnny was mentally down on his knees, asking
pardon for that first and single instant of wavering.

When the song was finished, there was a moment's
silence; and then the faint applause, which was all that
the presence of royalty admitted. Johnny saw Lady
Warborough turn a flushed face toward the exalted lady
beside her. The exalted lady was nodding quite urbanely.
But two rows in front of him the man who had spoken
in the supper room, was shaking his head. And "for
two pins" (Sir John Holdfast told himself), "he would
have knocked it off his shoulders."

She began another song. This time the pure notes
quivered. She was indeed frightened, poor child.

THE COMPOSER 29

delicate, lovely creature, standing up there before them
all, piping for their pleasure, all her hopes in life evidently
hanging upon their approval!

Just in his own line of vision, Johnny beheld the
anaemic countenance of one of those youths whose artistic
neckwear he condemned, gazing up at the platform. He
noted the expression of rapt admiration mingled with an
odious condescension — admiration (as, with unwonted
swiftness of perception, Johnny saw) for the young
fresh beauty; condescension for the immature singer.
A sudden fury leaped in his breast. If he had wanted to
assault him who had shaken a disapproving head, he
wanted badly to murder the owner of the eyes that
leered, Itppraised and patronized.

"It's no life for her!" he cried to himself, with a rush
of tenderness, wrath, and chivalrous disgust. And the
next moment, all the turmoil of the last days crystallized
itself into a passionate determination. ^^It shall be no
life for her. I'll take her out of it!'*

The audience, led this time by the good-natured Prin-
cess, applauded with a little more enthusiasm and Sarolta
gathered sufficient courage to give the last song without
that pathetic uncertainty that had gone to John Hold«
fast's heart.

"She sings like a thrush," he thought.

He sat on a moment or two, unconscious of the move-
ment around him, in a co];Ldition which he himself would
have described as "struck silly," when he suddenly real-
ized that the room was emptying, and that the one
purpose of his presence here was unaccomplished. He

so THE COMPOSER

rose in a great hurry and went boldly up the length
of the room toward that inner chamber into which the
musicians had disappeared.

He stopped a moment on the threshold, the glance of
his gray eyes flying unerringly to Sarolta, who stood the
centre of a group. Her cheeks were flushed. He had
thought her beauty was enhanced by her usual pallor.
N0W9 thus incarnadined, it seemed to him adorned as
if by jewels.

As he stared, he became conscious that many eyes were
fixed on him: those of his hostess severely, of Lady War-
borough with a smile, and of Princess Wilhelm with curios-
ity through her uplifted eyeglass. Sir Arnold Pringle had
a shocked expression, and Johnny was vaguely conscious
that, from a retired comer, Mrs. Mosenthal was gazing
doubtfully upon him. But Sarolta looked at him not
at all, and he could spare no thought to any one else.

"Why, it's Johnny," said Lady Warborough in a tone
which matched her smile. "Sir John Holdfast, ma'am;
may I present him?"

"Certainly," said the royal lady, very benevolently.

Mrs. Morton's countenance cleared as if by magic.
Here, then, was no longer a hare-brained young man,
audaciously breaking rules of etiquette in thrusting
himself into the inner circle, here was one whom Lady
Warborough called Johnny, one whose more formal title
called forth a greeting of special blandness from a royal
highness.

"You have come to congratulate the little singer,"
said the latter with a perceptible guttural accent. "I

THE COMPOSER 31

was just telling Lady Warborough: wonderful — quite
wonderful, in one so young — and beautifully trained."

The look which accompanied these words included
all concerned with practised urbanity.

"It was awfully jolly," said Johnny.

Her highness smiled more broadly at this: then advanced
a step, with the unmistakable movement of departure.
There was an instant flutter; Lady Warborough, Sir
Arnold, Mrs. Morton, gathered about the august one;
a small, eager, black, hook-nosed man sprang forward
from the outer room, summoned as if by magic by his
wife's imperious gesture to proflFer his escort. As the cor-
tege moved away, the Princess nodded a pleasant farewell
to Sarolta.

Johnny drew an audible breath of relief on finding the
coast clear.

"Oh, I say," said he, coming up to Sarolta, "you were
stunning, you know!"

She gave a little start and regarded him as out of some
very far-oflf, entrancing dream. Then he saw, with a
stab at his honest heart, that for a moment she did not
recognize him.

"I am glad you like It," she said formally: stereotyped
answer to the expected compliment.

But, even as she spoke, her face lit up. Johnny only
felt, without analyzing, the fascination with which light
and shadow alternated on her countenance.
So it's you!" she exclaimed.

Tes, it's me," he responded In his special language;
and thought that, upon this, he might shake hands.

32 THE COMPOSER

He took her fingers; wondered to find them ice-cold;
held them.

"You never told me " he began, but his moment

was gone: a loud, excited voice clamoured for attention*

*'Sarolta! Here she is, madame." And Mrs. Mosen-
thal laid her hot clasp upon her niece's arm.

"Sarolta, Sarolta — here's Madame Costanza!"

A magnificent being in pearl-coloured satin, conveying,
as she advanced, the impression of a ship in full sail,
pushed the Hebraic lady on one side, and took the girl
bodily into her embrace. Two kisses resounded like
pistol shots. Still holding her then by the shoulders,
she gazed into Sarolta's face with a pair of gorgeous,
hawk-like eyes.

"You are a treasure! A mine of gold!" she cried in
rich tones.

Sarolta had turned very pale. The glance she lifted
was full of awe and ecstasy. Johnny saw that she was
trembling again and wondered who this explosive Panjan-
drum might be who seemed to produce so much greater
an impression on the singer than had a Queen's daughter.

"Yes, my child," went on the lady. "You don't
know how to sing, of course, no — not for nuts, as you
say in England. You don't know how to breathe. Above
all, you don't know how to attack the note, poverina.
You don't know how to phrase. Your voice is not even
placed, to begin with. It is execrable. You have al-
ready a thousand tricks. Mais ga ne fait rien . . .
machi nichts. . . . The gold is there — a treasure!"

At the first words of this ruthless criticism Sarolta

THE COMPOSER 33

had winced as if the large, jewelled hand that gripped her
shoulder had struck her in the face. From pale she grew
a painful scarlet, and tears of intense mortification sprang
to her eyes; she set her teeth not to shed them. But
she was angry too. Behind those unshed tears her eyes
flashed, and those level brows were drawn so fiercely as
nearly to meet. Nevertheless, as the other rattled on,
and appreciation succeeded condemnation. Miss Vaneck's
expressive face lost its tense indignation, and quivered into
bewilderment. And Madame Costanza proceeded as if
these signs of emotion were quite outside her notice. There
was no unkindness, though, in the keen glance that saw
all — only a genial, if determined, purpose. She bore
down an apologetic attempt at interruption on the part
of Mrs. Mosenthal.

"And to think how little I expected such a discovery!
These great ladies, with their little new singers — ga me
connattl They pick a linnet out of a hedge and call it
a nightingale; set it twittering, and swoon with rapture
. . . till the next linnet hops up!" She broke oflf,
drew back, and flung out her forefinger. "Who has
been teaching you? " she inquired, with an acute change
of tone.

Obsequiously Mrs. Mosenthal answered, before Sarol-
ta's trembling lips could articulate speech:

"The Marchioness of Warborough was having her
taught by Sir Arnold Pringle, Madame Costanza."

"Sir Arnold!" repeated madame, "ah!" The long
drawn-out note held a world of significance. "And
that was why you were trotted out to sing *The

34 THE COMPOSER

Little Birch Tree/ and *0h, oh, oh! my Heart!' Tell
me, child, do you want to go on , with that kind of
thing? Have you no better prospect than to be the little
pipe for the little times of a Pringle? Oh, you might get
an engagement now and again at a ballad concert, and
at teas in Mayfair and make perhaps — perhaps fifty
guineas a year at the height of your fame! That is
your ambition, heinf And never to know any better
than to run up to your note, like a sailor up a rope, quite
pleased to get there, after all, hein^ Is that your idea
of art?"

"No," cried Sarolta.

She wrenched herself from the hand that emphasized
each cutting question with a gentle shake. Johnny saw
how her breast heaved with the sobs she would not utter.
For the third time that day he felt murderously inclined. .
But Mrs. Mosenthal came to the rescue, with volubility.
She could not say that she herself had been satisfied. But
what was to be done? Her poor Anton — a great artist, if
ever there had been one, as madame knew — had never had
much opinion of Sir Arnold. And indeed the children
had made great fun of those songs. . . . But he
was fashionable, and the Marchioness had been very
kind, and it seemed a chance for the child. And

Once more Madame Costanza brushed her out of the
way as if she had been a buzzing fly:

"Answer, you," she said to Sarolta. "Will you begin
again? Will you begin again with me? I will make of
you what I know you can be."

Sarolta leaned forward with parted lips; all her wrath

THE COMPOSER 35

and humiliation seemed to have passed from her; she was
hanging on the other's speech as if it held life or death.

"I will make of you," said the great one slowly, "an
opera singer ... of the first order."
Oh!" cried the girl.

There, Sarolta!" It seemed as if Mrs. Mosenthal,
too, were hardly able to contain herself with the joy which
this prospect oflfered. She began to weep between broken
phrases in which the late Anton's theories, and Lady
Warborough's aristocratic and absurd prejudice against
the stage were comically jumbled.

But Johnny felt his blood nm cold. It was bad enough
to have her set up to amuse a fashionable party; but
Sarolta, an opera singer!

"Well, ma petitey* Madame Costanza pursued, "it
only means unlearning and beginning again. But you're
young. Bah! what is that? You understand. I take
you to myself?"

She drew back as she spoke, reared her majestic figure,
and placed that expressive forefinger in the centre of her
chest. The hawk's-eyes demanded, "What do you say
to such an opportunity!'*

"Yes," she proceeded in a breathless silence, "I, I,
Costanza, I take you. You come to Paris. I ask you
no fees. I ask you nothing but to be a good child and
do as you're told. And if you're not the best Isolde I
ever launched, may I never train an opera singer again."

Johnny listened with a sinking heart, his mouth drop-
ping open in dismay. He felt as if he were looking on at
a play, as he saw the girl now seize Madame Costaza's

86 THE COMPOSER

outstretched hands and press them to her lips; while
Mrs. Mosenthal, her head inclined at an intense angle of
sentimental rapture, clapped her fat palms and exclaimed
incoherently:

"Well, Sarolta, of all the lucky! Of course she can
go to Paris, madame. There ain't any difficulty about
that. I'll go with you myself, love. No difficulty about
that. I don't care what any one says, 'pon my
word. "

*\4.llons, allonsl" cried the superb Costanza, impa-
tiently^ but with good-hmnour. "It is settled then. I
carry you oflf for an hour, petite. At the hotel we can
talk. I leave to-imorrow morning for Paris — the first
boat. Ohy Ihy W those boats! You can come with us
now also, madame, if you like. I will send you both
home in my taxi."

She caught Sarolta's willing hand, and tucked it under
her stalwart arm. Then, followed by Mrs. Mosenthal,
she rushed the girl with hurricane swiftness out of the
door.

Johnny stood forlornly gazing after them. She had
not as much as glanced back. She had forgotten his
very existence!

Lady Warborough, returned from escorting the Princesa
to the hall, came in upon his solitude, and the expectant
smile upon her face vanished.

"Where are they all?" she asked.

"They're gone," said he. "If you mean Sarolta —
I mean Miss Vaneck.'*

THE COMPOSER 37

She was too much struck by the matter of his statement
to pay attention to the manner of it.
Gone?" she echoed, frowning.
'Yes. Fat French woman" (most foreigners were
French to English Johnny) "carried her oflf. . . ,
She is going to teach Sarolta singing — I mean Miss
Vaneck."

"Teach Sarolta singing? But . . . but she has
been taught. I've had her taught. Good gracious,
Johnny, what's the meaning "

"Fat French woman said that was all wrong," explained
Johnny with sullen air.

" Upon my word ! " said Lady Warborough. The colour
rose in her delicate face. Then the humorous side of the
situation seemed to strike her; she laughed satirically.

"And where do I come in, I wonder?"

Johnny, as he marched back to his chambers through
the empty streets, repeated the question forlornly; and
forlornly answered himself:

"And where do you come in, John Holdfast? You
juggins, you don't come in at all!"

CHAPTER m

The crest of the Holdfasts was a "cubit arm" with
a clenched fist; and their motto ran in similar cant-
ing manner, "Holde Faste." A legend was, of course,
current in the family. But, without entering into
the question of its authenticity, there was no doubt
that they were an obstinate race, who, from one
generation to another, thoroughly upheld the imposed
tradition. Johnny, the last in the direct line of that
sturdy stock, had certainly no idea of modelling his
thoughts and deeds upon any conventional standard.
Yet, in his modern way, he was no less stubborn than
the far-oflf ancestor who had won name and preferment
by the sheer strength of his grip, in holding his North-
umbrian castle for Plantagenet. From the time of his
childhood it went characteristically against nature with
him to give up anything once he had laid hold of it.
On the other hand, his desires were few, so that he passed
among comrades as an "easy-going, good-natured chap."
He let himself drift, very much in the ordinary way of
wholesome young men, between an overwhelming amount
of sport and a reasonable amount of frivolity. But his
intimates gradually learned that his yea was yea indeed,
and his nay, nay. So that a certain respect mingled with
the jovial regard he was wont to inspire, and the "thorough

S8

THE COMPOSER 39

good sort" verdict universally passed upon him had a
truer meaning than is usually the ease with such com-
monplace praise.

For three days after his disappointing evening, Johnny
moped about in a dissatisfied way very new to him. He
went to a couple of balls and to some races, and derived
about as much pleasure from them as an acutely dyspeptic
man from a series of good dishes. Other fellows' jokes
could not produce a smile; the company and conversation
of the girls he generally liked were almost more than a
bore. He could not muster a stir of enthusiasm for the
best race of the day; he dropped his cigars half finished,
and turned from champagne to whisky and soda.

On the morning of the third day, however, he awoke
and found a certain decision formed in his mind, before
which the clouds melted away, and life stretched once
more cheerfully in front of him. He whistled over his
dressing, partook of an excellent lunch at the club, and,
at the earliest conventional visiting hour, presented
himself at Lady Warborough's house in Belgrave
Square.

He was received by that charming woman with her
usual affability; but upon the inmiediate exposition of
his purpose, a shade of stiffness, not unaccompanied by
doubt, came over her.

"Miss Vaneck's address? — She's left London." Then
the lady added, in the reserved tone that cloaked unspoken
disapprobation: "I'm not likely to hear any more of
her, Johnny; she has placed herself entirely in Madame
Costanza's hands."

40 THE COMPOSER

"Fat French woman!" commented Johnny thought-
fuUy.

"She is large, certainly," said the other smiling. "But
not French — Austrian, I fancy. Anyhow, she is the
great operatic trainer, and I understand Miss Vaneck
has been led to look upon herself now as a rising operatic
star."

"Oh, I say!" said Johnny, in a non-committal way.
He was sharp enough to notice the underlying streak of
bitterness in Lady Warborough's well-bred tones. But her
information was scarcely news to him; he had gathered
as much in Mrs. Morton's Bose-du-Barry anteroom on
the fateful night.

"My sister and I," said Lady Warborough, "had made
ourselves responsible for the child's training. My sister,
Selina Dorien, you know, first came across her, through
Mosenthal, Augusta's violin master. Sarolta was some
kind of relation of his, a distant one — in fact, I believe
Mosenthal's mother and hers were cousins, both Poles —
I don't know what her father was. But she was left
destitute, and they took her in, and brought her up with
their own brood. Extraordinarily charitable these artists
are! Mrs. Mosenthal had a dozen of her own already."

"Mrs. Mosenthal," echoed Johnny, profoundly atten-
tive. " That's the Jew aunt ! "

"I suppose they are Jews," said Lady Warborough
indiflferently. "Not Sarolta, though. Poor Professor
Mosenthal was very proud of that strain of Polish
blood, I believe. Well, my sister used to have h^r to
sing with Augusta. And when Mosenthal died, we

THE COMPOSER 41

decided to come forward and help them. We did
everything for Sarolta — she was quite a pet of mine.'*
Lady Warborough paused, swallowed down a rising bitter
phrase, and proceeded with a return of her chilly, de-
tached air: "Mrs. Mosenthal is taking a great respon-
sibility. I am afraid she is dazzled by the idea
of a second Melba and millions, of which she will
have her share. Sarolta is much too pretty, much too
fragile, and I must add, I fear, much too headstrong —
poor child — for such a life.

"A jolly rotten lot, I suppose," Johnny chimed in,
trying to conceal the agitation in which these words
threw him.

"Of course, Selina and I never dreamed of, never would
have permitted, anything but concert singing for her.
It's just what she is fit for, in my opinion — and indeed
in Sir Arnold's — and so we told her. I sent for Sir
Arnold — poor man, he was much annoyed, and no
wonder. But we might as well have talked to the wall.
Sarolta came here, I must tell you, ostensibly to ask my
leave for her new career, but really to inform me of her
intentions. Anything more determined — backed up by
Mrs. Mosenthal, of course — well, one must not expect
gratitude. To think," added Lady Warborough musingly,
"that I actually contrived — oh, my dear Johnny,
after endless diflSculty — in arranging such a splendid
debut for her, only to this end! — Well, well, I must not
think any more about her, I am done with her."

"But I'm not," said Johnny to himself. "I suppose,"
he said aloud, "she's got her in a school, or an academy

42 THE COMPOSER

— whatever they call it over there — in Paris, this
Madame fat French woman?"

"No doubt she attends her classes/' Lady Warborough
said wearily.

She had made her complaint; and after all, the
subject did not warrant prolonged discussion. A new
aspect of it» however, seemed to strike her; she gave
Johnny a searching look from limpid gray eyes:

"You take an extraordinary interest in MissVaneck,
young man. Where have you known her, may I ask,
and how long?"

Johnny blushed, but he boldly returned the lady's
quizzical glance.

"I do take an interest in her," he said, neglecting the
questions. "The fact is " He hesitated. His com-
panion's gaze was becoming more amused and less
disapproving. Lady Warborough had successfully mar-
ried all her daughters.

"I say," he proceeded lumberingly; "you will think
me no end of a fool. Cousin Vera, but the fact is I have
never seen any one I liked in that way before. And I
know I never shall again. I want to marry Miss
Vaneck."

"Good heavens!" she ejaculated, startled out of her
composure.

"Seems jolly quick, I know, and all that," he went on,
"but I've got to do things in a bit of a hurry, now, haven't
I, to keep them from putting her on the stage?"

"You can take a little time for reflection," said the
other with gentle irony. " She won't appear this season

THE COMPOSER 43

you know — nor for many seasons to come. My dear
Johnny!" Laughter overcame her. Then, contempla-
ting his serious coimtenance, she strove for gravity,
"How old are you, may I ask? You were of age last
year or so, weren't you?"

"I am twenty-four," said Sir John Holdfast firmly.

"Dear me," said Lady Warborough. "And I imder-
stand you to say this is your first love. Well, Johnny,
my advice is: wait for your third."

"That nice boy," she was thinking, "he has not got a
mother, or a sister, or any one to protect him." She was
silent, revolving the situation.

"Thank you awfully," said Johnny irrelevantly, rising
and holding out his hand. "I'll have to be oflf now; I'm
afraid I've been a bore."

"Wait a minute," said she, retaining his strong hand
in hers. "Warborough and I have been planning a
cruise in the yacht, ending up with Cowes, you know.
Won't you join us, Johnny? Warborough will be de-
lighted."

Johnny pumped her hand up and down.

" It's awfully good of you," he said gratefully. " Afraid
I can't, though. I'm going to Paris, Cousin Vera," he
went on, his bold, clear eyes defying the scarlet on his
brow. "I say, would you mind giving me the Jew
lady's address?"

"Certainly, I should mind!"

Lady Warborough's cheeks were flushed too. She was
holding herself very erect, and she had dropped Johnny's
fingers.

44 THE COMPOSER

"Oh, well, it does not matter — she's in Paris, anyhow.
I'll run that Madame Costanza down in a jiffy, I expect."

He went to the door, and paused to look back with a
good smile, just to show he bore no malice, and departed
in evident high spirits.

"That nice boy — that nice boy! What a pity!"
repeated the great lady to herself, staring regretfully
at the closed door.

1

CHAPTER IV

Johnny's search was not, however, conducted alto-
gether with such ease as he had anticipated. Madame
Costanza was soon enough '*run down," as he said, and
he obtained an interview without any difficulty. But
when she found the nature of his errand, he was
treated to the most profitless and unpleasant ten minutes
that he had ever known.

The hawk's-eyes were flashed upon him; the lady's
forefinger was flimg out with dramatic directness.

"And what do you want with her — with this Miss
Vaneck?" demanded madame of him.

Johnny jerked back his head resentfully. What
business was it of this fat French woman what he wanted
with Sarolta Vaneck? What business was it of anybody
but just of Sarolta and himself? But on second thoughts
he realized that perhaps it was just as well the lady should
look after the interests of her pupils — especially in
the case of such an uncommonly pretty girl. Accord-
ingly he smoothed the anger from his face, and, after that
rebellious pause, answered cheerfully stammering:

"The fact is I've come to Paris to ask Miss Sarolta if
— to — well, to marry me."

The extended finger dropped; the splendid flashing
eyes passed from the fire of anger to coldness of contempt.

45

46 THE COMPOSER

**En v6riUr* said madame, in tones of high satire.
"You're already on such terms with Miss Vaneek —
Indeed! And yet you want her address?"

"I — I — " the young man stammered. He hardly
knew what she was striving at, but it was surely some-
thing "jolly nasty." Yet how could he explain his
ignorance of the beloved's movements, the extraordinary
scantiness of their acquaintance?

**AUe jeune hommer* said Madame Costanza, and she
indicated the door with a dramatic sweep of the arm.

Lady Warborough, too, had called him "young man,"
but it had not been in such a tone as this. Furiously
it broke upon Johnny that while Lady Warborough seemed
to deprecate his project as unwise for himself, Madame
Costanza regarded him as threatening some harm to her
pupil. What harm! It was very unusual for Johnny
to turn pale, but he did so now from sheer wrath.

"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed, then dived for his hat.

What was the good of speaking to any one capable of

such a suspicion. It was just like a French woman, he

told himself.

Before he reached the door, a final remark of the lady's
struck his ear:

"I admire your audacity," she was saying. "You
come to me — to me — to assist you."

"I am very sorry I did," said he in honest indignation.

" I don't doubt it," she answered him. " Ahy mais — it
was a little too much to expect, wasn't it? Only an
Englishman would have had the front! ..."

It was certainly only an Englishman who would have

THE COMPOSER 47

left her, as Johnny did, without even an attempt at ex-
planation.

Yet, as he went along the Boulevard St. Germain, where
was situated Madame Costanza's well-known residence,
entre cour and jardiuy a sudden awful qualm seized him —
What would the woman say to Sarolta? And then
he was conscious that he had made a conspicuously
false start.

It was all the more necessary that he should find
Miss Vaneck without defay. The means he employed
to attain this end were artless but eflfectual. He merely
patrolled the western end of the Boulevard St. Germain
from the earliest likely hour, the next morning. And in
the group of businesslike young women with music
rolls under their arms who presented themselves at the
great teacher's house shortly after ten o'clock, Sarolta
herself duly appeared, escorted by Mrs. Mosenthal.

Mrs. Mosenthal had an obviously French bonnet
poised on the exuberant black curls. Sarolta, in a cool-
looking Holland coat and skirt, and a simple, shady hat,
made an astounding and delightful contrast. He was
glad to remember that, although she chose to style her
"aimt," Sarolta's relationship with the "Jew lady"
was not that of blood.

His first impulse was to cross the street with oat-
stretched hands. But he had time to reflect, and he
warily told himself that if Madame Costanza had had
the opportunity to misrepresent him he might very well be
repudiated on her doorstep, and have added mistake
to mistake. He had the strength of mind, therefore, to

48 THE COMPOSER

turn his back and stroll away up the Boulevard, gave
himself half an hour on the Quays, and returned.

By and by Sarolta emerged from under the lofty
porte coch^re; this time in company only of a scholar-com-
panion. Johnny — dogged, yet scarlet with shame at his
proceeding — followed the unsuspecting couple till they
parted at the corner of the Rue de la Harpe; when Sarolta
flew on alone with light step up the bandUy modernized
street and disappeared through the side-door of a little
frame-maker's shop.

Johnny's heart thumped as he followed, after a sufficient
pause, and, although the door was open, rang the bell.

He asked for Madame Mosenthal upon an instinctive
impulse to demonstrate the straightness of his purpose.
The pleasant maid, nut-brown, and sloe-eyed, clacked
her tongue and was desolated to say that madame was
out. Then, greatly daring, he asked for mademoiselle.

Promptly he was ushered into a small shabby room that
had nevertheless nothing to shock a far more fastidious
observer than Johnny. For it contained little besides
a piano, a couple of armchairs, a music-stand, and a clock.

Sarolta, still in her pretty winged brown hat, was
leaning with both elbows upon the lid of the closed piano,
studying a piece of music spread before her. At his
entrance she looked up, her bright face expressive of
intense surprise.

"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, then straightened
herself and flung the sheets of the music together. As
she did so, a name largely printed in black on the title-

THE COMPOSER 49

page, jumped at Johnny with an odd sense of familiarity
— "Lothnar."

" Good gracious ! " exclaimed she again. The complete-
ness of her surprise showed that Madame Costanza had
held her tongue. At this moment he hardly knew if
he were glad of it.

He must have presented a foolish spectacle, it may be
supposed, for all at once she broke into laughter.

"You do remember me, then," he said, gaining courage.

She remembered him.

"Yes, you are the young man of the canoe at Warbor-
ough House. But I did not expect to see you here."
Even as she spoke, the light mirth vanished from her air;
she drew her straight eyebrows together: "It is Lady
Warborough who has sent you, of course. Now I under-
stand. It is no use, no use! Nothing on earth will make
me give it up — my vocation, my career!"

They were both too innocent in their youth to be
conscious of the absurdity of such a suggestion. But
here was Johnny's opening. Looking back on it after-
ward, he said to himself he had been the silliest ass it
was well possible for a fellow to be; that he had stammered
and stumbled, and conveyed in the end hardly anything
of all he felt and much that was blundering and mis-
leading.

Nevertheless he could not give himself the comfort
that it was his bashfulness only which had procured him
so unqualified a rejection.

It was not that she had no love for him so much as
that she had no love for anything outside that Art

50 THE COMPOSER

(with capital A) which filled her every thought. All
Johnny's wealth, the position that his name would give
her, his two fine places, the pictures and the diamonds
tempted her no more than did his devotion. She laughed
at him first.

"You can't imagine how ridiculous you are.'*

Then she grew angry and demanded to know if he took
her for a fool.

In his misery he uttered something of his horror for
the life she was choosing; and then she fulminated:

"If you only knew what a fool you are!"

It was on this that she went back to her original
suspicion.

"It is no use pretending. Lady Warborough has sent
you after me."

And on his disclaimer, wrathful in his turn, she non-
plussed him completely by the fierce question: How, then,
had he tracked her? And how had he dafed?

"I hardly even know you. I would not even have
remembered your name if it had not been a funny one."

The young man had no choice left then but to pick up
his hat in silence, even as he had done at Madame Cos-
tanza's, and take his departure. He could not, however,
bring himself to leave her without a final word:

"Look here," he said, planting his card with a slap
on the top of the piano; "a line to that address will always
find me. And if ever you wanted me I'd come to you,"
added poor Johnny with an irrepressible click in his
throat, "from the ends of the earth."

The girl, in her young hardness, smiled derisively.

THE COMPOSER 51

And yet she was conscious of a faint, not iinpleasurable,
emotion, about her heart.

"You might want a friend, you know — you never
can tell," pursued Johnny doggedly. And then he
added, with a wistful air: "You cannot help my being
your friend, you know."

CHAPTER V

^'Meb filles," said Madame Costanza, addressing her
first morning class, that of her more advanced and prom-
ising pupils, ""I have had a telegram from Dr. Lothnar."

All this lady did was dramatic. Like Mrs. Siddons, it
would have been hardly possible for her to utter the most
trivial words without giving them the value of a stage
remark. But, unlike Mrs. Siddons, there was nearly
always humour even in her tragic pronouncements. It
was one of the reasons why her pupils adored her. She
might (and did) fulminate wrath, affect despair, or scathe
with scorn; but the keen hawk's-eyes, had always that
saving glint of mirth, the good laugh was never far from
the most thunderous outburst. The dramatic form in
which life presented itself to her added enormously to
its interest for those about her. Madame Costanza
could thrill her listeners with the story of a salad. If
she had come in upon her class this morning with the
remark: **Mes chSries, the sun is shining,'* the hearts of
those six damsels would have stirred in a manner no
amount of splendid rays outside could have evoked.

Yet now, the teacher's mien, her grand voice of impor-
tance, and the gesture which accompanied it, were
warranted.

The girls, who had risen from their seats with bright

52

THE COMPOSER 53

smiles of welcome, stood transfixed. One turned very
pale as with a sense of impending fate. The name of
this girl was Sarolta Vaneck.

"Yes, my children," proceeded the smging mistress,
after a due pause, "I have received a telegram from
the great Dr. Lothnar — he is in Paris. And he says :
*I want an Iphigenia. Will call this afternoon to choose
one of your Virgins.'"

A long-drawn " Oh !" ran from lip to lip : only Sarolta was
silent. Madame put the blue paper back in her pocket.

"It is so," she said in tones of satisfaction. "He may
try elsewhere — he comes back to me in the end."

She remained musing a moment; then went on:

"Do you know what it means, children? It means,
for one of you, the chance of a lifetime. Pooh ! What am
I saying? It means a chance that does not come once in
a century. . . . Believe me or not, Lothnar is one of
the great geniuses of the world. Wagner? Wagner the
precursor, I venture to say — Lothnar is greater than
Beethoven even — because Beethoven Ls also only as
a rung in the ladder. . . . You know what he
has already accomplished, mes chSries? His inspiration
is dramatic, but there is no living inspiration rich
enough to collaborate with him. So he goes to those
giants of old — to the Greeks! Across the centuries
they meet . . . iEschylus, Euripides — Lothnar!
The wonders of * Prometheus' are still on every lip. The
Trometheus' of Lothnar has cast fire upon earth indeed.
Now, I must tell you, a tenderer but not less magni-
ficent theme engages his attention, and he wants an

64 THE COMPOSER

Iphigenia. ... To one of you, children, to one of
you, little ones, may come the glory of interpreting the
new inspiration of Lothnar to the listening world." . . .

The speaker had a fine theme for her own dramatic
instincts, and she gave them full scope. She paced the
floor before her staring class; flung superb gestures broad-
cast; turned her flashing eyes heavenward, while her voice
fell into thrilling cadences, impressive as a church bell.

Suddenly she dropped from her heights. Humour —
slightly rueful perhaps — replaced her magniloquence:

"Only do not imagine that it will be all roses and
laurels, my cherubs. Whoever is chosen, let the others
say to themselves: ^OA, /d, Ih, nous Vavons ichappS belle!
We have had a fine escape from Lothnar's claws!'
That Lothnar, he is not human! If you think you are
going to be cosseted, complimented, made much of, as
you are here, oh! it is you that will be mistaken! What
he will want of you, he will get, if he has to grind it from
you, if you have to give it with your blood, with your
soul. And, if you can't give it — pft! That is the end
of you as far as he is concerned; you are nothing — a
cracked instrument to be thrown away. Understand
that: the singers are his instruments, and he will have
them tuned and pitched as he chooses . . . and then
he plays on them. That is why he will permit no perform-
ance of his chief works except at the theatre he has himself
founded, and under his own supervision. We have all had
to make our pilgrimage to Frankheim to hear * Prome-
theus,' crowned heads and poor artists like me, all alike!

THE COMPOSER 55

Now, Frankheim will out-Bay reuth Bayreuth — 'tis I tell
you so ! And Lothnar — it is a Satan of hardness, obsti-
nacy, pride — only he makes music like an archangel! "

With this encouragement, Madame Costanza pro-
ceeded to business details:

"Clare Voysey, and you, Isabelle, my good children^
as the Lord has chosen to give you contralto voices, this
is not for you. My friend. Dr. Lothnar, may be as
mad as any genius ever was, but I defy him to make an
Iphigenia out of anything but a soprano. Sady — FrSu-
lein Hedwige" — she hesitated a moment, her glance Best-
ing on Sarolta — "you have had only a year's training,

my child," she said kindly, " but " She paused again,

and a significant smile hovered upon her lips.

Sarolta's heart was beating so fast that she failed to
realize the encouragement. Between nervous apprehen-
sion and desire, she hardly knew whether the next words
were delight or terror. "After all, he can only refuse you.
Yes, I want him to hear you ... it would be well
he should hear you. You — and Marie too. Un peu trop
mezzo, this poor Marie; but, temperament! You will all
four come: Sady, Hedwige, Marie, Sarolta — this after-
noon — four o'clock, if you please. My little contralti,
I dispense with you for the day. Yes, Clare, should he
ask for a contralto I shall not forget you, but you do not
imagine you are a Clytemnestra yet, my poor innocent?
No, I will not hand you round on a little dish — I know my
Lothnar. Parbleu, he would be capable of tasting none of
my cooking at all. Mesdemoiselles, we will devote the
morning to singing each once through what we will serve

66 THE COMPOSER

to the doctor this afternoon. The same songs,'each of you —
I have thought it over. * L'Aria de Bach/ the * Canzonetta '
of Mozart. You have chance, Sady, with your facility
on the trill. *Elsa's Traum/ and the *Waldstandchen'
of Strauss. It is a great deal. It is even too much, but
do not believe that he will let you go straight through.
I have known him stop a candidate at the first four bars
of a song. I do not say this to frighten you — only to
prepare you. AUons, mes enfantsr*

Each of the four pupils left Madame Costanza's door
that morning with the tragic conviction that never had
they so disgraced themselves. The gay little American,
Sady Schreiber, who had broken down on her best shake,
was in tears, declaring that she could do it on her head
at home, but that she knew she had not a mite of a chance,
and vowing she would go to bed.

But Sarolta was silent, her teeth set, her black brows
drawn. She was saying to herself, "I will succeed!"
And an inner voice was whispering back to her, "You
will be chosen.*' She knew that when she returned again
along that street the violent beating of her heart would
seize her once more — that her knees would be trembling
beneath her, yet something in her spirit was slowly but
determinedly rising to the ordeal. A sense of romance
and adventure was stealing into her blood.

She had now been nearly a year and a half in Paris,
and had much developed, as a matter of course, in expe-
rience and in many other ways. Mrs. Mosenthal had
only remained with her long enough to see her firmly
established in Madame Costanza's good graces; and this

THE COMPOSER 57

latter lady had arranged with the well-to-do American
pupil, Miss Sady Schreiber, to give her house-room and
chaperonage. This word was not so absurd as it might
seem applied to Miss Sady Schrieber; for, though only a
few years older than Sarolta and remarkably pretty, she
was possessed, as Madame Costanza knew, of a consider-
able shrewdness and knowledge of the world. Compared
with most of her companions, she was rich; and though it
was her whim to live the student life in as complete a
manner as possible, she was able to live it with a due
regard to comfort as well as picturesque effect.

Sarolta had never had anything to do with money
matters, nor had she ever troubled her head with the
thought of them. She accepted the state of affairs ar-
ranged between Madame Costanza, Mrs. Mosenthal, and
Sady unquestioningly and without any sense of obliga-
tion; even as she accepted the fact that she must go in
shabby garments while her companion went in dainti-
ness; and that where Sady need never apparently deny
herself the satisfying of a whim, her own allowance of
five pounds a quarter had to keep her going in boots and
gloves and, as far as possible, in clothes too.

But, though Miss Schreiber practically bore the whole
expense of the minage, she soon recognized Madame Cos-
tanza's wisdom in providing her with a companion.
She grew enthusiastically fond of Sarolta. The arrange-
ment was thus to the advantage of both the girls.

Sarolta soon fell in with the self-reliant student ways
of her associate. She and Sady did everything together
— walked to the classes, frequented concert and opera.

58 THE COMPOSER

These months of hard work in a foreign land, away
from the protectors and playmates of her childhood, had
yet been the happiest she had even known. But it was
the mere preliminary stage before real life should begin.

Now she seemed to herself as one standing on the
edge of a great flood: the tide was calling her, to bear
her whither she knew not. She must leap and plunge
— and she would — with a high heart.

Madame Costanza, large and magnificent in velvet and
fur, received her trembling pupils that afternoon in the
hallowed precincts of her reception-room. This apart-
ment, with its glimmering expanse of parquet floor, its
superfine Steinway grand, its isolated groups of antique
f urnitiu^ and the celebrated collection of modem masters
that adorned its walls, was altogether awe-inspiring.

The girls missed the familiar shabbiness of the class-
room; and they were, moreover, conscious that, under-
lying their teacher's extreme jocularity, there was an
unwonted and considerable nervousness.

Then ensued an hour of dismal waiting. Madame
ceased to crack her jokes, grew restless, promenaded
through the shining length of the room several times,
drummed on the window-pane, shuddered at the fine
autumn rain falling without, with such expressiveness
that each pupil seemed to feel the chill to the marrow
of her bones; and finally declared, in a voice of one pro-
nouncing sentence of death:

"He will not come.*'

As she spoke, her momentaiy ill-humour passed. She

THE COMPOSER 69

stood in the middle of the room surveying the discon-
solate row, and gave a chuckle:

"I knew he had every fault, that Lothnar. But I
had credited him with a single redeeming quality. Yes,
he is a monster, I would say; but he has never kept me
waiting. Well! What long little muzzles; and a minute
ago your teeth were chattering. Eh bieuy quoif All is
not lost; we will console each other. We will have a
concert intimey and then tea. You will sing; I will sing.
Sady, I have ordered little cakes from Rumpelmayer —
je ne vous dia que gal'*

"Isn't she just adorable," said Sady to her neighbour.

So the curtains were pulled, the light turned on, and

the dismal October afternoon was shut out. The piano

was opened and Madame Costanza sat her down to it,

beckoning up the eldest of her pupils.

"We will, if you please, begin with the aria of Bach,
just as if that traitor was with us. Come, now, Hedwige,
a bold attack, if you please."

Hedwige, a dark, sallow girl, with a lowering coimte-
nance which much belied a simple earnest nature, took
her post at the piano and opened an immense mouth.

"Une vraie bouche de requin, that poor child! — I do
not deny it," her mistress would say of her; "but, out of
it will come something which will stir the world some day.
And, besides, for the opera, who wants looks? We leave
that to the music*hall, if you please."

So the plain Hedwige attacked her high note with
due boldness. It was not often that Madame Costanza
accompanied a pupil. But, when she did, it was as if

60 THE COMPOSER

she were lifting faltering purposes with her two strong
hands.

Hedwige sang; and her voice, in its extraordinary
power, echoed and vibrated round the room.

The door burst open and a man rushed in as if pro-
pelled by a whirlwind. The singing girl, as she stood
facing the door, was struck silent, though her great mouth
remained open.

The three other pupils sat transfixed. Madame Cos-
tanza's hands fell off the piano; she wheeled round upon
the music-stool, and screamed lustily:

" Commenty Lothnar ? Lothnar ! Is that you? **

One would have thought that seeing him had been
the last of her expectations.

The man halted in his headlong advance, and made a
flapping motion of his hand toward Hedwige.

^'I asked you for an Iphigenia," he said in a grating
voice.

"Hedwige, my child," said the mistress, in a sweet,
sad tone, "go and sit down."

Then she rose majestically, and indicated her three
remaining pupils with one sweeping gestiu^.

These two, Costanza and Lothnar, had not seen each
other for nearly two years, and were good friends. It
was a singular meeting; but the dramatic lady could
adapt herself in the flash of an eye to most singular
situations.

The man folded his arms, dropped his head, and from
under bushy overhanging brows, flung a searching look
upon each of the girls in turn.

THE COMPOSER 61

Sarolta, whose heart had almost stopped upon his
entrance, felt it steadying as she returned the great
musician's gaze with an odd sense of defiance. She saw a
tall, angular man, with features rugged, yet distinctly
chiselled. Across a dominating brow, furrowed with
three vertical lines of thought, a sweep of grizzled hair
was tossed like a seaweed across a rock. The lower
part of the face was half-hidden by a reddish beard that,
forking, gave the countenance something of a Leonardo
air; contradicted, however, by the wildness of a growth
evidently little used to cosmetics or shears. From under
the thick eyebrows, too, eyes looked out very diflFerent
from those of the serene Italian genius. These eyes were
uimiistakably northern: pale blue, flaming from the
shadow of those pent-house brows with an intensity
so concentrated, a light so fierce and brilliant, as to give
the impression of a spirit at once ruthless, certain of
conquest, and not quite sane.

"Rise, young ladies," said Madame Costanza. There
was a vibration as of quickened pulses, in her voice.

The three rose. Sarolta imconsciously stepped in
front of the others. His eyes passed her; then flashed
back to her. She felt as if her soul, a very small thing,
were being wrenched from its secret seat of life; weighed,
examined, turned inside out. He looked away again;
it was as if it had been flung back at her, a worthless
little rag.

"I will make Miss Sady Schreiber sing for you, doctor,"
suggested madame.

She beckoned to the girl as she spoke; and Sady ad-

62 THE COMPOSER

vanced, white to her pretty lips, with a smile more nearly
resembling the grimace of a baby about to ciy. The
ordeal was far worse than even her terrors had expected.

Dr. Lothnar hesitated a moment, then shrugged his
shoulders, and flung himself into the armchair nearest to
him so violently that it creaked again.

"Do not forget, my child," whispered the teacher,
as she pushed the girl toward the piano, "that you sing
as much for me as for yourself."

The other two sat down again; Sarolta remained stand-
ing because she lacked the simple initiative to move.
She had thought her soul had been flung back to her;
but now it was being drawn from her again, more slowly,
less harshly, but with so subtle a power that she felt the
defiance changing within her to some unknown sensation,
as of a decUne of her own personaUty, a giving out of
herself toward something all-absorbing. Beneath the
shadow of a lean hand propping his forehead, the master's
eyes were fixed upon her.

SadySchreiber's light, sweet voice, miraculously flexible,
fell silent at last, after a silver-clear trill. Madame looked
round in triumph. It was not every one who could render
you Mozart like that!

Lothnar's hand dropped from before his face.

"I have heard nothing," he said abruptly.

"^lA, maisy par exemplel ..."

"I've heard nothing! "repeated the man in loud over-
bearing tones. "Make that one sing."

Madame half rose from her music-stool; a flush of anger
was on her handsome massive face. Her keen eyes

THE COMPOSER 68

crossed glances with those madly luminous orbs of his,
and there seemed to ensue a silent measuring of will.
Then the lady turned back to her keyboard.

*' Approach, Miss Vaneck/' she said with an irritation
she dared not let loose upon the genius.

Sarolta never knew how she sang.

"Quite execrably," madame told her afterward, in
the same words she had used at their first meeting. Sady,
on the contrary, assured her, with the loyalty of a com-
rade, and the pride of one who had suffered defeat, that it
had been too lovely. Sarolta knew herself that her breath
had unaccountably failed her, that she had gasped, as
neither Sady nor Hedwige had done; that she had broken
a phrase, and, only for madame's superb accompaniment
had perhaps broken down altogether. But, apparently
none of this had mattered. Something of the gold,
perhaps, which Madame Costanza had discovered had
shone and glittered through all these defects. Any-
how, before she had reached the end of Elsa's amorous
chant, Lothnar got up, placed his hands on Madame
Costanza's shoulders, and unceremoniously turned
her out of her seat; then, sitting down himself, he
called the girl to him with a single jerk of his
eyebrow.

"Sing!" he ordered, striking a note. "Louder.
Again. Again." Each time he sx>oke, his long thin
finger struck.

Sarolta's voice rose and rose again, each time more
purely, more strongly. Her cheeks were scarlet, her
heart beating against her ribs; and yet, growing upon her

64 THE COMPOSER

was a sense of strife, of exhilaration that was aknost
ecstasy.

**Na,'' said Herr Lothnar, dropping his hand from the
piano, to address madame in German. '^So well she has
not studied, but something she has contrived to learn.
Etwas hat sie dock gelernt.** He looked and spoke across
the girl, ignoring her proximity. The teacher hastened
to exculpate a favourite pupil.

"She has not had time yet. She has been with me

only " He interrupted her with a ruthlessness that

was somehow not offensive, so obviously did it spring
from an intense concentration of idea and purpose.

**Na, it is all the better. I will the easier make of her
what I want."

A stir ran through the room, repressed by the awe
which the man's presence inspired in them all, including
the doughty Costanza herself . So! Sarolta was the chosen
one! Sarolta herself felt a sudden calming of her senses,
but no surprise. Had she not known she would be chosen?

He sat awhile in silence, his blue eyes seeming to look
inward and yet at something infinitely remote. Save
for Madame Costanza's heavy breathing, there was no
soimd in the room. Then he struck a few chords and
broke into a curious measure, now five, now six, to the
bar. Into this presently came a phrase of piercing
yet very simple sadness. It was not a phrase in the ac-
cepted sense, for it ceased without coming to a close.

"Heavens, how sad!" cried madame. "It brings the
tears to the eyes!"

'And you?" cried Lothnar, turning the searchlight

€t

THE COMPOSER 65

of his glance full upon Sarolta, "what does it say to you?

Nothing but that, heinf A wail? A drowning kitten
apostrophizing fate?"

She answered him boldly, almost fiercely, as one de-
termined not to be intimidated.

"No; it is sad, but it is strong. It accepts fate."

The man sprang from his seat with the energy that
characterized all his movements. He caught the shaded
electric light from the piano, and lifted it so that its full
harsh illumination fell upon Sarolta's face. Resisting
the natural impulse to blink and turn away, she followed
that other curious rebellious sense and gazed back
frowning into the eyes that scrutinized her so brutally.

" Who is responsible for you ? Are your parents alive ? '

"I am an orphan."

**Desto besserl So much the better." He laid down
the lamp as he spoke and tinned away. Once again the
absence of any personal element in his remark prevented
its callousness from being utterly unbearable. Silence
returned to the great room. The man stood, driving his
fingers through his forked beard, lost in thought. Sud-
denly he scowled from the sitting pupils to their teacher.

"Impossible to talk before these little frogs! We have
to discuss things unter vier AugenJ*

He spoke irritably, reproachfully. Madame Costanza
hurriedly endeavoured to atone.

"Go, my children, go! We keep Sarolta, do we not?"
She hesitated.

"Did I not say unter vier Augen?**

"Go, then also, my child," said, with her large patience.

M THE COMPOSER

the teacher of Sarolta. ** You shall hear from me to-night,
I promise you."

Sarolta demurred. Was she to be sent forth, and fate
still hanging in the balance? She felt driven to ques-
tion point blank, but this time courage failed her: she
dared not.

Lothnar, still standing, flimg a single look at her that
drove her out of the door, as if his hand had been on her
shoulder.

" Oh my ! oh my ! oh my ! " ejaculated Sady , as she bun-
dled herself into her furs in the anteroom, with a comical
air of mock terror on her delicately quaint face. "The
rockiest old grizzly that ever growled isn't in it! Aren't
I just glad, as madame says, that I'm not in his claws!"

"I think I'll sit on the doorstep, and wait till he comes
out!" cried Sarolta wildly. "Why should I be treated
like this?"

"You'll do no such thing," said Sady, flinging her
friend's cheap boa about her neck and dragging her to
the door. "You're not going to play spillikens with
fame and fortime! It's all very well pretending, but
we'd just give our ears to be you — wouldn't we, girls? "

The other two looked at Sarolta askance, without
replying. This sign of incipient jealousy comforted Miss
Vaneck more than her friend's optimistic assurance;
she allowed herself to be led homeward, along the wet
shining street.

Sady only stopped once, and that was to groan aloud at
the thought of the little Rumpelmayer cakes wasting their
sweetness on Madame Costanza's untouched tea-table.

CHAPTER VI

HuMAONG Elvira's sweet, prim "Lament," Sady ran
gaily up the many stairs to their cinquUme in the Rue
Clotilde.

Sarolta, following two flights behind, her very feet
weighty with thought, heard the twittering voice break
into a cry, followed by an excited hail:

" Sarolta, Sarolta ! Say — your beau has been here ! "

She had a scornful smile as she emerged from the
dimness of the stairway to the brightness of the top
landing, where the incandescent light was of the crudest
description. It illuminated something just now, how-
ever, worth looking at — a bimch of hothouse carnations
and roses was tied on to the door handle of the little
apartment. The close air was filled with the scent of
southern gardens.

"Faithful Johnny, of coiu'se!" said the American
promptly.

She disengaged the flowers and siu^eyed the card
attached. As she had opined the inscription ran : '*With
Sir John Holdfast's kind regards." Underneath this
formal dedication were a few words, apparently added
at the door itself: "Sorry to miss you. May I call this
evening? "

"Now, that's what I call being properly bunched,"

67

^n

Ty

i y > - "^

68 THE COMPOSER

commented Miss Sady, dipping her little nose among the
petals and drawing an ecstatic breath. ''Not a wire
in that lot, my dear. It's just as if some one had gone
and harvested in a fairy bower!"

Keep them, then/' said Sarolta with indifference.

I make you a present of them — and of the donor
too."

"Don't I wish you could," responded the other, with
truthful accent. " My angel, wouldn't I just quit it all
and settle down to domesticity and society — the cream
of British society — with a thankful heart! I wasn't
cut out for a career, and that's a fact; and I don't hanker
to share any laurels with the grizzly that calls itself
Lothnar."

Sarolta made no reply as she let herself in. She crossed
their single sitting-room, bumping against the furniture
as she went; fumbled for the handle of her bedroom door,
and having entered, shut it behind her.

"Sarolta!" called her companion, surprised. But the
only response was the click of a bolt shot into its socket.

"Well, I never!"

Sady deposited her flowers, turned on the light, ex-
amined the state of the fire, and mended it, and pro-
ceeded to make preparations for a belated and substan-
tial tea that would serve them for an evening meal — it
was part of her scheme of "glorious Bohemian freedom"
that, save for the morning visit of a jovial Normande, they
should live imhampered by servants. She next plunged
the flowers into a jar of green ware, drew the curtains
closely, and surveyed the scene with some pride.

THE COMPOSER 69

She had chosen this perch, on the highest rise of the
hill of St. Genevieve, the loftiest point of that quarter
of decayed colleges and convents extincts^ known in older
days as TUniversit^, after much search and deliberation.
The house had its front on the wide stone-flagged Place
du Pantheon — perhaps the most deserted, most digni-
fied, and delightfully silent spot in ancient Paris.

Having duly furnished the low-ceiled, rambling suite
of mansarde rooms, she had found an ever-increasing
satisfaction in their ownership. To begin with the view
they had from under those zinc-covered eaves ! There was
not — except from some church steeple — such a wide
and free one in all Paris, she would declare.

And certainly there was something in the statement.
The three small dormers of their sitting-room gave over
a fine perspective of the Pantheon Dome on the right, of
St. Etienne du Mont's mediseval spires on the left; and,
beyond the brown roofs, sloping down to the east, sundry
centenary trees of the Jardin des Plantes raised waving
evergreen tops. Sady would point you out the noted
cMre in IM)an with a proprietary air.

And from their bedroom lucames^ at the back, you
could please yourself with a vision of the twin belfrys
of Notre Dame; and beyond, the bold outline of St.
Jacques on his tower, or beyond again, the pearl-gray
roofs of the Louvre; or beyond all, toward the sunset,
the misty-green outline of Argenteuil Hills — not to
mention that in some afternoon hours the great pile of
Montmartre's Sacr^ Coeur, white, sad, and aloof, would
fling back from its roMOce windows glints of sunshine.

70 THE COMPOSER

golden or carmine. The rooms were different indeed from
the dose sullen lodgings of the Rue de la Harpe.

Sady had taken an artist's pleasure in furnishing
with quaint and antique simplicity. The carved-oak
bench and chairs, the fifteenth-centuiy bahui^ and the
rest of it had cost her a good deal, though Sarolta thought
that things nearing, as these did» the verge of decay must
have been bought for the sake of economy.

Even if her own exiguous means had allowed her a choice
in the matter, the younger girl's disposition would have
made her shirk any of the duties of the minage^ including
the more agreeable one of adorning the habitation. She
was profoimdly indifferent as to what she ate and drank,
whether she lay soft or no. Sometimes, indeed, absorbed
in her dreams, she would scarcely perceive if it were warm
or cold about her, and would let the fire out, to her
comrade's fury. She took her life with Sady as a matter
of course, with all its pretty refinements; much as she had
taken the noisy, scrambling, hand-to-mouth existence
with the Mosenthals, or the luxury of her visits to Lady
Warborough.

To Sarolta the only thing that mattered was that inner
life of hers, vivid, ambitious, shot with wonderful fancies
and stimulated by relentless work.

So it may be said that Miss Schreiber was the presiding
genius of this quaint students' dwelling in the Rue de
Clotilde.

Having duly contemplated the effect of the branching
roses over the embroidered tablecloth, set with the cups

THE COMPOSER 71

of pdtS tendre which had been her most recent purchase,
she next made the tea, and then called lustily upon her
companion.

"I'll come presently," was the answer extracted at
last, as from a long distance.

"I expect you're qualifying for an assistant grizzly,"
cried Sady with cheerful tartness.

She sat down herself, but somehow could muster no
appetite without the usual companionship. And once
again she shouted :

"Do come, Sarolta! It's real mean of you to shut
yourself oflf. Sarolta!"

The door burst open, and Sarolta stood irate and
blinking on the threshold.

"Can't you leave me a moment in peace?"

The indignant retort which was rising to Sady's lips
fell silent; she had caught sight of her companion's
face.

"You've been crying! Why, honey, what is it?"

The other stiffened herself against the loving arms fiiung
about her, against the dear tenderness of the voice; but
the next moment she was weeping aloud, pressing close
to the little comrade's breast, feeling the thin embrace
tighten around her, and drawing a comfort from it that
yet in an odd way added to the poignancy of the ache at
her heart.

"Tell me, honey! Tell her own Sady! My blessed
lamb, don't sob so!'*

"I don't know," gasped the other. "Oh, Sady, hold
me — I'm frightened!"

72 THE COMPOSER

" My blessed ! — It's the horrid bear ! There, you shan't
go with him. Why should you go? I'll tell Madame
Costauza myself. Grood gracious! Nobody can make
you go, darling."

She broke off abruptly, for, with a vigorous movement,
Sarolta had pushed the consoler away.

'"Not go!" she was laughing in scorn, though the tears
stood on her hot cheeks. "Not go? Oh, Sady, how
silly you are!"

"Then, why are you crying, miss?"

Some slight show of exasperation in such circumstances
may be permitted even to the most easy temper.

"Because I am silly, too, I suppose," said Sarolta
succinctly. "Oh, no, don't ask me to explain. I might
talk till Doomsday, and you'd never understand!"

She sat down, fell hungrily enough upon a crisp petit
pain^ and pushed her cup toward the teapot.

SweUing with indignation, Sady performed the desired
office, dropping the sugar and measuring out the milk
with the air of one who wished it to be understood that
she will not lightly presiune again. But a minute had
not passed before Sarolta's hand stole across the table
toward her.

"Oh, dear!" cried the placable American, and her
bright eyes became suffused in her turn — "What shall I
do without you?"

"You'll have to come too — that's all," cried Sarolta.

The sense of oppression had gone from her. She grew
gay — almost recklessly so.

In the middle of her second roll she sprang from the

THE COMPOSER 73

table, breaking off her excited chatter, to rush to
their little bookcase.

"Who was Iphigenia? Haven't we got anything
Greek here? Sady, is it possible that you are so utterly
lost to culture as to have nothing Greek on our
shelves?"

"Well/* said Sady plaintively, stirring her tea, "I
got you all the Norwegian myths, and two lives of Wag-
ner, only last month, Sarolta, and "

The shrill summons of the door-bell, incongruously
followed by a discreet tapping, interrupted her.

"My message!" cried Sarolta.

She flew out of the room, and was heard wrenching
the bolt. A disappointed ejaculation and the murmiur
of a manly voice followed; and Sady laughed as Sir John
Holdfast walked meekly in, following the openly disgusted
Sarolta.

"Well, now!" exclaimed Miss Schreiber, "if you have
not come in the very nick of time!"

The newcomer's face, which had been the picture of
discomfiture, brightened perceptibly at the words. Miss
Vaneck sat herself down again to her abandoned tea in
sullen silence.

Johnny was more than a year older, but nobody would
have given him the credit of it. Only an acute observer
might have noticed certain new lines of determination
about the mouth, and an increased directness and steadi-
ness of gaze. He might seem as boyish and blundering
as ever; yet within him was the man who knew his own
mind.

74 THE COMPOSER

"I'm glad to hear that, Miss Sady," he said. "Won't
you shake hands?"

Sady tipped her little fingers in friendly fashion into
the big clasp oflPered to her. Duri:ig the months of her
joint life with Sarolta this adorer of her friend's had be-
come a familiar personality; from whichit willbe seen that,
in spite of the uncompromising rejection of his addresses.
Sir John Holdfast had contrived to establish himself at
least on an intimate footing with the object of his
adoration.

Sometimes a simple straightforwardness of method,
backed by an undeviating piupose, will accomplish its
end where the utmost tact might fail. Before the young
man had reached the end of his disconsolate homeward
journey, after that first unsuccessful visit to Paris, he
had told himself that the parting need not be irrevocable,
even if her decision should be so. There was no reason
why he should not at once endeavour to start the friend-
ship he so earnestly offered her. It would be, at any rate,
a step in the right direction.

And, after all, this modest ambition he found not too
difficult of realization. Sarolta had never been brought
up to conventional ideas of prudery. Sady hailed from a
country where the very respect which surrounds the young
girl precludes any thoughts of the precautions rife in less
chivalrous coimtries. And, from the first, Sady liked
Sir John. Though quite realizing the hopelessness of his
case, she could not help admiring in a feminine way the
indomitable perseverance with which he appeared with
his offerings of flowers, opera tickets, motor drives.

THE COMPOSER 75

and the like. She admired, too, the guarded courtesy of
his attitude toward two girls, ready in Bohemian fashion
to take the fun he offered them.

Though Johnny's "friendly" visits to Paris, after a
duration of between five to seven days (according to the
frequency of Sarolta's smiles), invariably ended in a pro-
posal, he had never once presimied beyond a manner which
would have been becoming to the courting of the best-
chaperoned yoimg lady in England.

Sarolta dreamily enjoyed the fragrance and beauty
of her admirer's flowers, ate his sweets, revelled in the
opera boxes, and found the motor drives stimulating;
but it was Sady who appreciated the chivalrous fashion
in which the Englishman offered all these good things.
"Real grit," she called him; and something more.

She provoked Sarolta's contemptuous mirth on one
occasion by referring to him as a kind of Knight of the
Roimd Table; and her furious indignation by actually
pleading his cause. For that lapse she had been ever
after humbly apologetic. Was not Sarolta set apart,
being marked for Art (with a big A), and for a Career
(with a big C)? Was she not given to the world for its
joy, and was it not to give her in return undying glory?

Sarolta's belief in herself and in her vocation was not
only shared by her friend, but encouraged by Madame
Costanza herself. Yet even, in spite of such ambition
for her favourite, and the fact that she was a very dragon
of propriety in aught that concerned her pupils, Johnny
had contrived to conciliate this redoubtable lady.

76 THE COMPOSER

Reassured that the youth was no gay Lothario — reas-
sured besides, that he was not likely to tempt Sarolta
from the lonely path of high achievement, she had come
to regard Johnny's periodical visits as quite agreeable
diversions. Most normally constituted women like nice,
smart, good-looking young men; he grew tohe**ce cher
Johnny,** or "ce pauvre Johnny** on madame's lips. She
did not wish him success, but she, too, was sorry for him.
She permitted his assiduities to her pupil because of their
discreetness as much as because of their hopelessness.
And so it was that, in spite of this hopelessness, Johnny
f oimd himself pleasantly among friends during his French
trips.

Yet this evening Sarolta had positively scowled at
sight of him. It was disheartening.

"Have a cup of tea," said Sady, comfortingly.

As he sat down he cast anxious eyes at the countenance
of his adored one. Those fine black brows of hers were
still drawn; those lips he loved were set into a line which
only youth and their lovely carmine kept from being
stem to hardness.

Sarolta had many times looked angrily at him — indif-
ferently, mockingly. But to-night there was something
else in her rare glance: contempt — almost dislike!
He wondered what he had done — She had been expecting
some one else, and was disappointed to find it was only
the stupid Johnny ! That was it.

She was expecting some one else! As this conviction
grew upon his mind his face flushed darkly. Who could
it be? He put down his teacup.

THE COMPOSER 77

Sady here, unconsciously, enlightened him.

"Sir John, did you not hear me say, you're just in the
nick of time?"

"Did I?" said he, confusedly, startled from his jealous
trend of thought.

"My, yes! — you needn't be frightened a mite.
Sarolta, do for goodness' sake put a pleasant face on! —
You've just scared your visitor stiff. She'll smile on you
in a minute. Sir John, if you'll only promise her all the
books on Iphigenia that have ever been written, the first
possible moment to-morrow morning."

"Iphigenia?" echoed the bewildered Johnny.

"Yes, my dear sir, Iphigenia — a Greek lady, who, as
well as I recollect, was imkindly treated by her papa.
Behold!" said Sady, waving her hand — "the new
Iphigenia!"

Sir John was more at sea than ever. "I never knew
you had a father about. Miss Sarolta." At which Sady's
laughter rang out, while Sarolta only himched her shoul-
ders like a petulant schoolgirl.

"Sir John," cried the American, "is it possible to be so
lost to culture?"

"Perhaps," said Sarolta, suddenly fixing the yoimg man
with darkling eyes, "he's never heard of Lothnar either."

"I'll be shot if I have," said Johnny.

But, even as he spoke, memory pricked him. Stay,
where had he heard that name? When had he seen it
written?

"Lothnar," he repeated; "wait a minute! — I say,
isn't he a fellow who writes songs or something? That

78 THE COMPOSER

day I found you in your old lodgings, with your aunt,
you know, you had a song with that name on it, on the
piano/' He was smiling at his own acumen, when the
jealous anxiety returned in full force. '*I say, is he the
fellow you were expecting to-night?"

Even Sarolta's ill-temper was not proof agunst such an
absurdity; she joined in Sady's mirth with a laugh as
uncontrolled as a child's. Then both the girls spoke
together:

"Lothnar here!" mocked Sarolta, "we'd be as likely
to have Kaiser William!"

"Why, man alive!" cried Sady, "Dr. Lothnar's a
tre-mendous person! The great genius of the century,
as madame calls him. But it's quite true," she added,
"Sarolta's expectation has to do with him: we are to
know to-night whether he's going to have her to sing in
his new opera."

"It's almost settled I'm to be his Iphigenia," said
Sarolta.

She lifted her head proudly, drawing up her slender
throat. The glance she fixed on Johnny was no longer
unkind; it was brilliant with a wonderful light.

"By George," thought he, "her very face seems to
shine! • . . Oh, how beautiful she is, and how I
love her!" thought Johnny, while his honest heart sank
low and lower with an indescribable sense of failure.

Vaguely it came upon him that a rival admirer might
have divided them less than this. So the moment had
come, the thought of which he had abhorred and dreaded
from the first, Sarolta, flower of girlhood, was to tread

THE COMPOSER 79

those desecrating boards; was to offer herself up for the
public pleasure, be criticized, stared at, admired, applauded,
or hissed.

"Oh, I say!'* he murmured feebly.

But Sady caught a glimpse of the misery in the young
man's eyes, and was moved to administer consolation.

"It ain't all settled yet, you know!"

"Sady!" , . . reproached her friend fiercely.

And here it was, as if madame's dramatic instinct
could never fail her, even at a distance, that the little
bell pealed again and all three started to their feet.
That's it!" said Sady.
Let me go!" said Sir John.

Sarolta sat down again, seized with trembling.

It was an irony of fate, surely, that it should be from
poor Johnny's own hand that his beloved should receive
the siunmons to her new life.

"All is arranged," madame wrote in her wild scrawl.
"I expect you to-morrow, at ten o'clock. . . . My
dear little Iphigenia!"

The parcel of Greek translations which Sir John had
duly brought round in the morning remained unopened
where they had been deposited in the antechamber.

Th£r^se, the Normande, had put them out of her hand
in a dark comer; and Sady herself only found them long
after Sarolta's departure.

For the old life in the pleasant rooms of the Rue de
Clotilde was destined to go on but for three days more: all
Lothnar's decisions were followed by prompt action, and

80 THE COMPOSER

Sarolta had hardly a moment to breathe — much less to
think. She received immediate orders for Frankheim;
only sufficient delay being granted to enable Madame
Costanza to communicate with the London relatives.

The girl had one or two solenm interviews with her
singing-mistress — in which that lady gave her a vast
amount of advice, professional as well as motherly, but
hardly any enlightenment upon the future.

Dr. Lothnar himself had arranged, she was informed,
where she was to live at Frankheim; and had even
provided a companion for her journey, from whom she
she was to receive all necessary instructions.

"As for you," said madame, "you have just to be
obedient. Begard yourself as one going to a new school —
but don't altogether forget the old teaching.''

She came to the station to see her pupil ofiF — that was
a dramatic moment! She folded the girl in a warm em-
brace; chid Sady gayly for her tears; and finally thrust
Sarolta into the compartment designed for her, after a
volubly conducted introduction to a sallow, elderly person
who already occupied it.

Frau Teresa Hegemann silently extended a knobby
hand to Sarolta. It was cold, even through its brown
woollen envelope.

" Write to me, hon^ ! " implored Sady. The tears were
coursing down the uplifted face, the small pointed chin
quivered.

"I will, I will!" cried Sarolta, waking from the sort of
trance that held her, to lean out of the open window to-
ward her disconsolate friend.

THE COMPOSER 81

Madame Costanza's kind, handsome face, though
determinedly wreathed in smiles, seemed to her to wear
a look of doubt, almost of anxiety. The night was very
chill, and the hour uncongenial to high spirits. The
prospect of so many dark hours of journey, in a second-
class carriage with so grim-looking a companion, was
disconcerting. Sarolta felt as if she were being wrenched
from all warmth, safety, and affection; and unacknowl-
eHged misgiving assailed her.

Madame, meanwhile, was persistently haranguing the
taciturn Grerman lady; she expatiated on the convenience
of there being no one else in the compartment, on the ex-
cellent sleep they both could have, each on her banquette,
on the possibility of obtaining coffee at the frontier.

"Please be seated, frUulein," said Frau Hegemann
suddenly to Sarolta. "You cannot be aware that you
are blocking the window and keeping me from hearing
all that Madame Costanza has to say."

It was her sole acknowledgment of the great lady's
urbanity.

As Sarolta hastily sat down, madame made a little
rueful grimace at her.

"Still a couple of minutes,*' she said, consulting her
watch. "FoyoTW, Sady; do not let yourself go like that,
you will do your voice a mischief!"

It was here that Sir John Holdfast made a totally
unexpected, but not unwelcome, diversion. He came
rushing along the platform, interrupting his progress with
little jerks to stare into the high carriages as he passed.
The expression of his face was comic in its intensity.

82 THE COMPOSER

Sady waved her soaked handkerchief with a little
giggle; and this brought him with a rush to their com-
partment. He was encumbered with one or two parcels,
besides the inevitable flowers. Even as he came to a
standstill, doors were slammed and whistles sounded.
He had time but for a few inarticulate words:

"Just found out you were ofiF — thought Fd never
catch you! — Few flowers — few bonbons"

(It is to be admitted he said "bongbongs. **) *

Madame and Sady good-naturedly assisted in the
hoisting up of these farewell tokens. In her forlorn frame
of mind, Sarolta hardly knew how gentle was the glance
she gave him, how pathetic the smile!

The long train groaned and moved away. The girl
shut her eyes tight, clenching her teeth: she would not
trust herself to give a last look at those kind faces, those
waving hands, whose clasp had been so strong and
friendly!

"Dieu V0U8 hSnisse^ mon enfant . . .** Madame
Costanza's farewell words were lost in the rattling of the
window as Frau Hegemann severely closed it.

Sarolta lay back wondering why she should feel so
forlorn. How joyfully she had skipped away from
London, on the occasion of her first great departure; how
little she had minded the tears of the Mosenthal herd;
the regrets of her English friends! Nay, to be frank,
had she not rather been glad than otherwise, when fat,
vulgar, good-tempered Aunt Rebecca had left her to
her own devices in Paris?

Madame and Sady — these two were more to her

THE COMPOSER 83

than those others to whom she owed all. Even the
scent of Johnny's flowers was gushing up to her nos-
trils now with a singular appeal.

The train was moving quite fast through a pano-
rama of half-built» lamp-lit roads. She cast a look upon
the unfamiliar outside world, and then, for comfort, parted
the tissue-paper to gaze at her bouquet. She started as
Frau Hegemann addressed her:

**Es thut mir Leid^ fr^ulein, but it will be quite impos-
sible for me to endure those flowers in the compartment.
All strong scents are, vberhaupU noxious to the voice.
So, for your own sake, you will do well to throw them
out of the window."

Sarolta's first impulse was to resist so absurd and
ill-natured a demand.

"Really! " she began.

She broke off, however. Had not madame said,
"You must be docile?'* Was not this old woman,
odious as she might be, chosen to look after her by
Dr. Lothnar, by the great Master, himself?

"If I cover them up, very closely, in the paper
again . • ." she faltered.

"I cannot have it at all, frUulein," said the other
firmly. "And, anyhow, it is perhaps best that we
should come to a clear understanding from the first.
It is under my roof that you will reside, at Frankheim,
das Hegemannsche Haus — a boarding establishment
for ladies of the highest families, who desire privacy and
retreat — and the institution is conducted upon the strict-
est principles of discipline. No gentlemen are admitted

84 THE COMPOSER

promiscuously.'' She paused, and the gaze she now
fixed upon the girl was charged with unpleasant signifi-
cance. ^'I allow no promiscuous intercourse under my
roof/' she went on, emphasizing the words with her
brown-gloved hand. ^'Frankheim is not Paris/' she
asserted, with German hatred and contempt. **My
regulations, with regard to the young ladies entrusted to
my care, you will find, no doubt, very different from those
of Madame Costanza's. Neither out of doors or within^
will young females boarding with me have opportunities
for light intercourse. I make no inquiries into your
past, fr&ulein," she concluded with increasing venom,
'^but you must understand that this kind of thing cannot
occur at Frankheim!" — the bony finger indicated the
flowers.

For all reply Sarolta sprang to her feet, let down the
window, and flimg the lovely bunch of fragrance and
colour into the night. She had never wanted Johnny,
nor his love-tokens; yet, as she cast this last one from
her, it seemed as if she had been made to sacrifice some-
thing that was both good and strengthening to possess.

She sat down again, panting a little, feeling the cold
of the air rush across her burning cheeks with a sense
of relief.

"May I beg that you will shut the window again,"
said her companion, sarcastically polite.

CHAPTER Vn

'^Hegemannsche Haus, Frankheim:

November 3.
Dablin6:

I hope you had the post-card announcing my safe
arrival. I have your two dear letters. Forgive me,
Sady. I know I ought to have written, but I could not.
A week here to-day, and oh, my dear, you can't think
how horrid it is. I don't know how I shall stand it.

Madame said I must regard myself as a girl going
back to school. I never thought how true that was
going to be, or what a disgusting school I was to find
myself in, witLFrau Hegemann for head-nfistress. She's
got an old sister, FrSulein Schwank, and she's just
as bad.

I've got a pocket of a bare room, looking out on a
narrow street, and here I sit with nothing to do — nothing
to do, Sady, that is the worst of all. There are three
other girls here; I don't care much about them somehow,
though they are pretty, I will say that, and quite young.
They are too German and I don't think they like me.
They are to have some part, they think, in the new opera;
they don't know what yet. One of them — she is almost
a peasant — sang in "Prometheus." I believe they hate
me because they've heard I am to be put before them.

85

86 THE COMPOSEE

And there are some old cats that match Frau Hege-
mami and her sister. We are never allowed out by
ourselves; we are hardly allowed to talk to each other,
undragoned by Frau H., or one of the old cats in
question. I could scream. Sometimes I think I'll
run away. It's positively maddening. I keep asking
Frau H., "What am I to do?"— "You must wait,
frttulein. You will be told in due time what you are
to do." "But my work?" — "You can practise your
singing in the salon.**

" Achy wasr I cry. " How can I practise when I haven't
even got the score?" " That you'll have to wait for,
frSulein." "And besides," working myself up into a
fine fuiy, I assure you, " if I am to be expected to get
up my part in your stuflFy salon^ with everybody coming

in and out !" "You will be told, fr&ulein, what is

expected of you, when the time comes."

And so it goeson. Wouldyoubelieveit? — shewouldn't
even let me buy the book about Iphigenia! One thing
I have secured, though, and that is the words of " Prome-
theus," as Lothnar produced it — it's stuck up in every
book and music shop with picture-postcards, and photo-
graphs, and portraits of Lothnar himself, and Friedhelm
Reinhardt, the tenor, as Prometheus. You remember,
don't you, Sady, how madame raved about him? I'm
going to send you a couple of them — I mean the post-
cards — and one of the new theatre, which is in the mid-
dle of the Park. Of course I haven't been allowed to
see that yet: it is the resort of the Frankheim fashion
and the military, you know! We trudge up and down

THE COMPOSER 87

the wet streets — it*s fiendish weather — with some old
gorgon at our heels. The only thing that consoles me
is that it is Lothnw, Lothnar, Lothnar, on every side.
I went into a shop to buy some shoelaces, and there was
a dreadful coloured picture of him over the counter, with
a laurel-leaf hanging crooked on the comer of it; and
the shopman was talking to a fat customer about him.
^'Ja, hehas arrived, unser Doktor" he was saying. **He
is at the Altschloss. Na — na, hewahrel Now nobody
may approach him. Bir componirt ja.** "One says
the new piece is to be grossartig,'* said the other.
Groasartigf** echoed the shoemaker, wagging his head.
My son, he is third flute, as perhaps the Gna Herr
has heard.'' . • •

And then, my dear, Frau Hegemann plucked me by
the elbow, and told me it was unbecoming to try and
attract the attention of strange gentlemen! And oh!
Sady, I should like to have bitten her, only that I
hate her so that her very touch makes me shudder.
Schoolgirl! My dear, I am kept like an infant, a pris-
oner, a Carmelite. Oh, our dear free Paris days, our
dear pretty home together! You and I used to feel like
birds, used not we? — able to fly together wherever we
liked, and such a dear nest to go back to! Sady, Sady,
ourteas,our little dinners — the petit pains — quite hot, and
the smell of the wood fire! Even if the rain pattered on
our roof, it was so gay — and when the sun shone, it was
just a white and gold town, with the blue of the sky above !

Why am I kept like this? I don't understand. I am
miserable. * If something doesn't happen soon, if Dr.

88 THE COMPOSER

Lotlmar does not send for me soon, I shan't be able to
bear it.

I saw to-day on a placard that they are going to give
a performance of "Prometheus." I don't suppose there's
the least use in my asking to go to it. But they have
allowed me to read the book, at least.

NoVEBfBER 5.

N09 Sady» darling, I'm not dead. You ought not to
scold me for not writing. You won't, when you get
this, and know how too unhappy I have been. Well,
Schdtzchens things are a little better. Actually, actually,
I've been allowed to speak to a man! Indeed, I have
been sent for, to speak to two men — what do you
think of that? Of course, the old cats were there, and the
other three girls; but — things are better. I'll begin
at the beginning. I was sent for to the salon, and there
was a great, splendid giant of a man, with a flung-back
fur-coat, a blonde beard and tossed hair — I wonder if
you've guessed? It was the tenor, Friedhelm Beinhardt.
He is just like his portrait on the postcard I send you,
only not so inspired, of course. But so kind-looking, and
so kind too! I've quite* lost my heart to him. Now,
don't be ridiculous, miss! He's got a wife and I'm to
go and have kaffee with them next week.

It seems he is Dr. Lothnar's dearest friend; so the
least scratchy of the old cats told me. They are like
brothers together, and he is the only man who is not
afraid of the Master. You've no idea what a strange feel-

THE COMPOSER 89

ing it is. The power of the man, shut up in his Altschloss ;
quite away, and yet dominating every mind in this little
town. Even I feel it. Frankheim is Lothnar's — the
very air of the place is full of him. Lothnar — his Opera
House, his great schemes, his next work, the last music
festival, his oddity, his genius, his tyranny, his greatness
— there is nothing but that. The Grand-Duke himself
is not in it. He is only at Lothnar's beck and call like
the rest of us.

Well, this is rambling away, isn't it? I must go back
to that stuffy salon. The other man, my dear, was a
stout German with spectacles. Uncommonly stolid
I thought him, until I heard he was Herr Webel, Loth-
nar's great conductor. Except Lothnar himself none
but Webel has ever been allowed to have anything to
say to the Frankheim orchestra. He has round eyes
that stare straight before him. He hardly said anything
at all, but just sat with his thumbs pressed together over
his waistcoat and nodded, or shook his head, when
spoken to.

We had to sing in turn, and Herr Webel accompanied
us. It made me feel rather nervous; but, except madame,
no one ever accompanied me like that before. That
peasant girl has a voice like a bell.

And oh, Sady, I have so much to say I don't know
how to get it in! They brought us tickets for the
"Prometheus," and we are going to-morrow night. And
we are to have a music-room to ourselves — I and the
girls; only two of them left, by the way; for the other has
been sent packing — I don't know why. She got the

90 THE COMPOSER

message to-night. I asked for her at supper, and was
just told she was gone.

We are to begin work soon; and I think I understand
that Herr Reinhardt has had his orders, that he is to put
me through my part, to begin with. It seems funny,
doesn't it? that the tenor should coach the soprano.
But nothing is done here as it would be anywhere else.
We don't question — we just obey.

Oh, pray that I may not prove a failure! The way
that girl was just bundled off has given me the creeps!
What shall I do if I am found wanting in the end!

November 6, Midnight.

Sady, Sady, I am back from the "Prometheus." It
is the most glorious thing! You can have no idea of
it. It's — no, I cannot describe it. You must hear it
for yourself. I am entranced, in ecstasy, hors de moil
And Reinhardt was magnificent. When I saw him I
wondered how it would be, for somehow he is such a
Teuton, such a Viking — a regular Siegfried, not a Greek.
But it was an absolute revelation of power. Prometheus is a
Titan — half a god; and Reinhardt, his voice, appearance,
the whole impersonation was Titanic. Colossall one could
hear people saying to each other all over the theatre.

There was a box with the curtains drawn, and I
believe Lothnar was behind them — some say with the
Grand-Duke, who likes to come incognito like that, I
am sure Lothnar was there, for one could not help feeling
his presence. Oh, I must finish this long letter.

CHAPTER Vin

''Permit me, dear Bertha, to present to thee FrSulem
Vaneck of whom I have told thee so much. Fraulein,
this is my liebes Frdtichen.**

"Ach, Fraulein Vaneck," said Prau Reinhardt. "I
am heartily glad to make your acquaintance! It is
true, my husband has spoken much of you. He tells me
of the wonderful voice — Ach^ frUulein, what courage
you have! How often I say to my man: 'I could find
it in me to wish thou hadst been bom without a voice.* "

"Do not believe her!" said the good-natured tenor,
showing a row of splendid teeth in the wide smile of a
child. "She is quite pleased, sometimes, when I have a
little success."

Nal — I admit," said Frau Bertha complacently,
I am proud of my man."

Sarolta thought to detect a certain condescension in
the proprietary tone of this remark, and hazarded the
question:

"Are you, perhaps, also a singer, gnadige frauf**

She spoke timidly enough. It was the first time she
had been permitted such a dashing act of freedom as this
afternoon visit, unattended. The rigid guardianship to
which she had been subjected since her arrival in Frank-
heim had acted depressingly upon her sensitive artist

91

02 THE COMPOSER

nature, and seemed to have made of her a different being
from the Paris Sarolta — gay, self -reliant, ne dotUant de rieuy
sure of her own importance in the scheme of the world. She
coloured hotly now at the unexpected effect of her remark.

''II*' cried her hostess, straightening her plump figure
with an offended air. "I — frftulein. Ach^ that is
truly a comical idea!"

Friedhelm Reinhardt himself appeared as anxious as
his wife to correct the impression.

"Betoahrer* he exclaimed — the vernacular equivalent
to "Heaven forf end!" — "My wife is the daughter of
Mr. Privy Coimcillor Court-Medicine-Doctor Stieglitz,
of Darmstadt."

"You can conceive, frUulein," added the hostess,
smoothing down her ruffled feathers with something of
the movement of a little fat pigeon, "that when I broke
with every tradition of my family, to wed with my Fried-
helm, it was not altogether an easy matter. • . •
Ach, my Papa, and die Tante and my sdiger Onkel the
Justiztaih. How were they not angry! But love,
fr&ulein, love conquers all."

Her bright brown eyes swam sentimentally.

"Yes," echoed the Viking. He laughed in his blonde
beard, but the laugh was tinged with emotion. "Love,
as Bertha truly says — love conquers all!"

"And I would not wish thee other than thou art,"
admitted the noble Bertha. "Thou knowest that, my
Friedhelm!"

"There is no mistaking it," thought the astonished
Sarolta. "The creature is patronizing that great artist!"

THE COMPOSER 93

She sat with parted lips, staring from one to the other,
under her straight brows; and blushed again to intercept
the amorous glance that passed between the two.

In her mind was a rising scorn. How was it the man
did not realize that it was he who condescended! What
could he see in her that he could look with such eyes of
admiration and affection? — could look at this uninspir-
ing, conmionplace court-doctor's daughter from Darm-
stadt?

The Reinhardts' house was a quaint wooden structure
some way beyond the walls of the old town. It reminded
one of Switzerland, not only in appearance, but in actual
situation; for it was perched on the side of the hill, with
a pine-crowned crag at the back. Sarolta had had to
climb a precipitous path to reach it from the main road.
Had the windows been opened, the roar of a torrent would
have filled the room.

But the windows were not open. Frau Bertha was no
advocate of such a system. Wasteful in winter to let
in cold air when stoves were lit; while in smnmer, hot air,
sunshine, dust, and flies were equally obnoxious to the
housekeeper. '

Sarolta thought sarcastically that the lady's type of
mind was well enough typified by the atmosphere about
her. But there was an agreeable fragrance of fresh-
ground coffee, which redeemed the situation.

Buxom Frau Bertha bustled to serve her; and, though
prejudiced and disdainful, the girl could not but notice
the excellence of the beverage, the crispness of the
Wc^elfiy and the snowy daintiness of the embroidered

94 THE COMPOSER

napkins handed with every cup. It was evident that
the singer's wife was a hausfrau of the first order.

The conversation proceeded briskly, though in a one-
sided manner. Friedhelm was for the most part silent;
attentive to his guest» and ready to beam an affirmation
to the smallest appeal from his wife. Sarolta, too, had
little to say; but she was by no means in one of those
moods of dreamy absorption, in which the external world
was a blank to her. She was, on the contrary, keenly
alive to Frau Bertha's chatter. For the name of Lothnar
was forever recurring in it, and each artless word cast
a fresh light upon that isolated and mysterious figure.

"You like our little. house, Fr&ulein Vaneck? Ach, it
gives me pleasure to hear you say so. But what a x>osi-
tion! What? You like the position? Is it possible!
That water yonder, as I said to Dr. Lothnar, I hear
it in my sleep. It pursues me! And those gloomy
pine-woods! The doctor says they're wholesome.
Gott! They make almost as much noise as the
water, with the wind in them! And then the incon-
venience — as I told Dr. Lothnar with these lips:
*Qf course you cannot realize the inconvenience —
quite twenty minutes' walk to the market! And
by-and-by, when our Ulrichchen grows up, what a way
it will be for him to get to the school!' So I said to Dr.
Lothnar — and he little Ulrich's godfather! He will
never be able to come back to his dinner. He will
have to take it in a basket! And then, the loneliness!
Not a house nearer than the town — except indeed the
Schloss — and that is all very well for Friedhelm to be so

THE COMPOSER 95

near the Schloss, as I tell him; but what diversion is it
to me who am not allowed across the threshold. Though
indeed, Herr Lothnar can be very agreeable company,
fr&ulein. Aiffable and entertaining — and sometimes
comic ! Achy to make one laugh to death ! ''

Sarolta frowned involuntarily; it displeased her to
hear that the Master could be affable and entertaining
to this second-rate little woman. She did not for a mo-
ment believe that he could be comic!

But she was thrilled to know that the Schloss was near;
and the end of her hostess's next speech made her rise
and eagerly go to the window.

"iVa, what can one do? When the doctor orders, we
submit. We all submit. Is it not so, Friedhelm?
Bah, even Frau Hegemann, rigid as she is, has to
duck the head when he so much as lifts a finger. He
said to me: * I must have Friedhelm within reach;' and,
true enough, he will summon him at any time. We hear
the great horn blown from the balcony of the music-room
yonder; and even if my poor man has but just sat down
to a Kalbscotelettey he must drop his knife and fork and
hurry away! Is it not so, my Friedhelm? iVa, fr&ulein,
you can see a bit of the roof and the gilded vanes over
the trees."

She followed the girl to the window as she spoke, and
the flow of her talk uninterruptedly babbled on:

"Figure to yourself, dear fraulein, that we were settled
in the most delightful apartment imaginable. Conceive!
A second-floor, looking on the Markt Platz/ What had we
not there? Electric light, telephone, central heat, and

96 THE COMPOSER

society. But Herr Lothnar — Herr Lothnar would have
none of it! Achy might he not have run a telephone
wire to the Schloss? But the look he gave me when I
suggested it. . . • I'm not often frightened, but I
did not dare say another word, I assure you. Ah, these
artists! And then he had some droll idea — that is his
way, Fr^ulein Vaneck: Prometheus can only evolve
himself among pines and crags, he said. He would not
listen to me when I told him that Friedhelm was scarcely
ever disturbed in the dining-room. Bocks and pine-
trees! Did he not tell thee so, Friedhelm? And so it
was. Pack, pack! Achy what a career! You have
courage, frUulein. Another cup of coffee, Friedhelm?
Thou hsust had but three!"

Sarolta still stood, gazing out. There ran the red road
looping round the precipitous hill upon which stood the
wooden house. Yonder it lost itself behind a cluster
of trees, and there it ran again in view. Where spread
that mass of black trees was the park, and the curvetty
weathercock rising from among them marked the Schloss.
The Schloss! The enchanted dwelling where brooded
the magician whose wand ruled them all.

Then she glanced up at the lowering pines that seemed
to hang over the house and longed to fling open the case-
ment that she might catch the full voice of the torrent.

A Prometheus can only evolve himself among pines
and crags, he had said. There, in words, was the Lothnar
as she conceived him — far away indeed from the affable
comic man of Frau Reinhardt's description!

The mighty drama of iEschylus had laid hold of her

THE COMPOSER 97

imagination. Yes, the singer who would be inspired to
interpret the Prometheus of JSschylus and of Lothnar
should steep himself in such wild and solemn scenes!

How superb Friedhelm had been in the part was the
talk of the year. The girl now heard him gulp down his
fourth cup with disdainful amazement. Suddenly she
turned excitedly back into the room.

'^Frau Reinhardt! Here is a man coming down the
path through the pines toward the house. . . I think,
I think, it is Dr. Lothnar!"

Her eyes were filled with the vision of the striding figure,
bareheaded and bent against the wind, with wide gray
doak flapping behind. It could, she was sure, only be
Lothnar; and there seemed fitness that he should come
down like this from the ruggedness of the mountain and
the sombre shade of the pines, marching against the wind.
'Tis he, indeed, gtiier Kerll** said Friedhelm jovially.
Achf wasr* exclaimed his little wife. "That means
fresh Waffeln. I will tell Rosa to beat the paste, ready for
me to turn. Ach! and little Ulrich; shall he not have his
plaid frock to greet the godpapa?"

"Wait a minute, Bertchen," advised the tenor. "The
Master may not be in the mood for our wormletl Na, I
must open the door to him.''

Sarolta remained standing, amazed that the knowledge
of an advent, which was plunging her in such agitation,
should be received in this manner. Hot Waffelnl —
the plaid frock for the wilrrnchent Frau Bertha cer-
tainly had the talent to bring everything down to her
house-baking level! Then she began to wonder: ought

/
98 THE COMPOSER

she not to go? Her hostess had vanished to the kitchen.
She could hear Friedhehn's lusty shout in the garden,
answered by another as lusty. Ought she to try and slip
by the two as they met; or would not that seem a dis-
courtesy?

Frau Bertha reappeared, scarlet-cheeked and bright-
^ed« She screamed at the mere suggestion.

"Ach, was! But it is quite likely he is come here to
look at you! Besides, I promised Frau Hegemann to
conduct you back."

Lothnar seemed to carry the breath of the pine-woods
in with him. He entered at his hurling gait, brought
himself up short, undid his great cloak at the throat, and
flung it at Friedhelm.

"How, how! — what is this?" he shouted. "It is
suffocating here. Do you never open a window, frau? "

"i45er, yes, every morning, Herr Doktor, to shake the
rugs," cried the lady, scandalized.

"Well, since they can open, open all, for God*s sake,"
ordered the newcomer. "How can my tenor keep his
lungs in play if you give them no air? Answer me that ! "

"Na; when a man perspires so freely as my Friedel
it is very dangerous to let the open air in upon him."

"He would not perspire so much," pronounced the
Master, "if you did not keep him in a furnace. Ah,
you women, are you not the devil? Is it not true,
Prometheus?"

Prometheus turned a heated countenance from the
task of unbolting the casements. He mopped his forehead;
a gust rushing by the window set his blonde beard waving.

THE COMPOSER 99

'^It is true I perspire freely" he said in a non-committal
tone» while Frau Bertha plucked Sarolta by the sleeve
and whispered:

"^That is what the doctor always says: Women are
the devil! Is he not comic!"

Dr. Lothnar drew in the air with a sharp sound,
and then for the first time seemed to become aware of
Sarolta's presence. He hailed her:

"ilcA — are you there!"

At that she advanced to him. His hands behind his
back, he surveyed her.

"So! There you are."

Frau Bertha pattered out of the room, coiffee can in
hand; and Lothnar turned his head quickly at the sound
of the closing door.

"Fresh coffee, ha?" he queried of Bainhardt, who stood
impassive, genial, beside him. "Thy frUuchen's coffee
is worth drinking."

"And to-day we have Wafelriy* added the giant,
simply.

" Waffdnf — PrachtvoUI Only have a care, mein bester;
not enough air and too much clover, and you'll get too
fat for me — and then what shall I do?"

" Oh, I shall grow thin. You'll see to that ! " said Rein-
hardt, with his flashing smile, as he wheeled the best
armchair forward. "You'll take it out of me in good
time, when we begin the repetitions, never fear!"

Lothnar let him self drop into the seat, with a groan
of content.

"Fr&ulein, if you will place that little table at the

a^;90B

100 THE COMPOSER

Master's elbow," whispered the tenor, "I will help the
wife to carry in the coflFee."

**Mfin Friedhelm," said Lothnar suddenly, "when
didst thou fail to please me? " He spoke with a softening
of his whole countenance, smiling with lips and eyes, in
a way that was a positive revelation to Sarolta. His
harsh voice had a husky tenderness. She had been
brewing indignation at the manner in which she was
treated. She was not a little girl — nor an inferior —
to be kept standing and ordered about. Yet, as Loth-
nar spoke these last words, like a flash her puerile irrita-
tion went from her. She told herself, passionately, that
for such a look, for such a tone from him, she could
gladly die.

Then she was alone with him, and the blue eyes were
upon her.

"iVa, and that table?" he was saying, with a quizzical
smile.

Flushing, she brought it. With the well-remembered
jerk of his eyebrows, he kept her standing.

"Well, and how do you like Frankheim? And how
does Frau Hegemann look after you?"

His glance was once more plimging and searching.
Sarolta's spirit began to rise to the challenge.

"I shall like Frankheim well enough, especially when
the work begins," she blurted out, "but I hate Frau
Hegemann. Look after me? She looks after me as if
I were her prisoner."

Lothnar drew his brows; his rugged face took an air
almost of ferocity.

THE COMPOSER 101

"Quite right,'* he growled, twisting his fingers in his
beard. "That is my will; I keep my vestals close."

He disengaged his hand; lifted his forefinger, threaten-
ing. There came a thunder into his voice:

"Aha, what is that I hear of you? What of young
men with bouquets and presents at the station? Iphi-
genia with sweethearts! Pfuil What have you to do
with a sweetheart? Answer me that."

The girl blushed to agony, as she cried indignantly:

"I have nothing to do with any sweetheart."

"So. What business has that yoimg man about you?"

"No business. He wants to marry me. I won't have
him. That is all."

"So. Then if you won't have him, why do you let
him bring you pretty things? Why do you keep him
dangling? Why do you take his flowers? Is that maid-
enly? Is that becoming? Is that for an Iphigenia?
Come here. Come nearer. Let me look into your eyes.
Do you not understand what maidenliness means to the
maiden? If you lose that, who is to give it back to you? "

It was as if, fascinated by his power, Sarolta could not
resist compliance. Yet, even as she drew close and ad-
vanced her now whitening face to his gaze, there sprang
a fury within her, so overwhelming that if she had had a
weapon to her hand she might well have struck with it.

He broke into an unexpected chuckle and motioned
her from him.

"iVa, it goes still, it goes still! A German virgin, with
eyes cast down, tears and blushes ready at a look,
such a one you are not. But fire you have; and it is

102 THE COMPOSER

still white flame. That is well. White let it bum!"
Then» with a whimsical change, he said curiously: "And
why will you not marry him — the rich Englishman?"

"'I don't know." Sarolta bit her trembling lip; she
might have shed tears with comfort, after that fierceness
of anger. But she would not — would have killed herself
rather. "I don't want him. I don't want to be married.

I " she flung him a full, defiant look. " I want to sing

Iphigenia."

"So " said Lothnar gravely.

CHAPTEE IX

A WEEK later, with the abruptness characteristic of
him» Lothnar summoned Sarolta, within the hour, to
the Schloss. It was Friedhelm Reinhardt who brought
the message. He kept the droschke in which he arrived
waiting at the door. Frau Hegemann was to accom-
pany them.

Sarolta wondered, as she flung on the fur cap and the
warm squirrel coat that had been Sady's farewell gift
to her, whether it was in pursuance of his theory of vestals
that Lothnar desired this lady's attendance upon her, or
whether it was for the purpose of receiving another report.
The girl's heart still burned when she recollected that
conversation in the wooden house; how she had been
spied upon and misrepresented; and the singular things
Lothnar had said to her. Yet her wrath was all for
the woman, for the servant — not at all for the Master.

She hurried down the stairs and into the droschke,
and found that she was expected to take the back seat
as a matter of course. Reinhardt, wrapped to the
ears in a huge fur coat, had already settled himself beside
the multi-angular Hegemann.

The cold was piercing, under a steel-gray sky. The
sorry animal that drew the fly slipped and stumbled
along over the ice-bound road, to the fierce chucks of his

103

104 THE COMPOSER

driver. It was perhaps Frau Hegemann's presence
that rendered the tenor so unusually silent. Aft^ an
encouraging smile to Sarolta, he tucked his beard inside
his upstanding fur collar, and became absorbed in thought.

Seated on her narrow perch, Sarolta turned her gaze
away from the contemplation of the two visages to that
of the shifting scene outside. Up one street they went
and down another. The little town grew poor and
quaint and ancient; the walls reared themselves; they
rattled out under the old Town Gate between barren
fields on the one side and the advanced posts of the
pine forest on the other. All the mounds and cracks of
the red earth were white with frost. Hoar hung from the
pine needles; the bramble and ivy strands along the banks
were delicately silvered. Friedhelm roused himself as at
last his little wooden house came into view, and looked
eagerly for some signal from the sealed windows.

"The wife must be in the kitchen," he said, and there
was pride mixed with his air of disappointment. It was
evid|||t, Sarolta thought, that this perpetual cooking was
to nmi the ideal work of womanhood. She wondered
vaguely how he regarded herself — only, of course, as a
little girl still, or she would not be sitting back. But
when she had blossomed into the great singer she meant
to be, surely she would be treated as a being apart.
She remembered how operatic stars were regarded in
London, the court that was paid to them by the highest
in the land. . . . One day people would press forward
as she passed, get themselves presented to her as if she
were royalty, strew her path with flowers^ not from silly

THE COMPOSER 105

sentimentality like Johnny, but as a testimony to genius.
No one would expect her to make coflFee or toss wafers,
much less to be sitting with her back to the horses as if
she were a servant.

The wall of the Schloss park leaped up on one side of
them, and in a very few minutes the old horse was drawn
up sprawling before the high, closed gates. A surly-
looking doorkeeper peered at them through the bars; but
at sight of Reinhardt he saluted and unbarred and^
groaning on its wheels, the droschke was turned into the
avenue.

A slight shiver came over Sarolta, as the dark sombre-
ness of the park closed in about them. Unlike the
surrounding coxmtry, the trees here were nearly all oak
and beech; a rank vegetation had been allowed to riot
unchecked. A good deal of brown foliage still clung
to the trees, and the untouched leaf-mould of years
spread thick underneath.

They emerged, however, presently into a wide space,
which must have been devoted to the pleasure-grounds,
but which was now a mere stretch of overgrown grass-land,
with only here a choked-up fountain and there a lichen-
covered balustrade to testify to past splendours.

In the midst of this melancholy decadence rose the Alt-
schloss. Once the most coquettish expression of German
baroque taste, and the favourite summer resort of the
Electors, it now stood, with its curvetted ironwork rusted,
its bulging balconies and its terrace balustrades crumbling,
its high, broad-eaved mansard roofs moss-grown, the
most forlorn, discarded thing imaginable! Ludvngsruhe

106 THE COMPOSER

had been meant to hold the pleasant pomps, the mimic
state, the gallantries, and the intrigues of a little
Court, aping, in its puppet way, Versailles's splendours;
and its stones, that were carved all for smiles like
the lips of a coquette, could have in ruin no dignity.

Any one who found interest in contrasts might have
pondered over the grim turn of fate that had made the
Sommer Schloss of the princely rulers of yore a refuge for
a Lothnar. The man who had chosen this dwelling-
place because of its possibilities for a fiercely imposed
seclusion, cared as little for the degeneracy of his sur-
roundings as he would have cared for its gilded and
tasselled luxury. In the old days his existence would
hardly have been acknowledged within those walls,
except as an apology for an evening's amusement. Now
the stem son of the people ruled as no twenty-seventh
Ludwig or Friederich-ICarl had ever ruled over the whole
province. Frankheim had never known such an auto-
crat — nay, Frankheim*s own legitimate sovereign thought
himself honoured by the musician's condescension and
would gladly have placed a less neglected residence at
his disposal, that he might reign in fitting state.

No such thoughts, apparently, struck Friedhelm Rein-
hardt, as they drove up. Outside the well-defined circle
of their inspiration, great artists are apt to take life as
it comes, much as children take it. Frau Hegemann,
on her side, was certainly not given to philosophic mus-
ings, still less to romantic. As for Sarolta — confused
impressions struggled in her brain; and thought
jostled thought to a point that sometimes dazed her.

THE COMPOSER 107

Not yet twenty, she was still just a creature all of impulse,
of desire, not of reason or judgment. She felt the romance
of Lothnar's surroundings but without defining the
sensation.

As she slipped into the empty chill spaces of the hall
after her companions, the pitifulness of this faded finery
struck her more, indeed, than could any splendour of
Gothic decay, open to sky and wind; but the sense of
proximity to the immense personality she was about to
meet swallowed up all power of consecutive reflection.
It was only afterward, in long hours afterward, that
she pondered, and knew the poetic smgularity of it all.

They were introduced by a good-natured-looking, flat-
visaged, square-shouldered servant, who grinned jovially
at Reinhardt; and, pointing over his shoulder toward a
door on the right, thus addressed him:

**The Master is above, Herr Friedhelm. He would
speak to the Frau Tante first. But it is heated in
there." He again jerked his thumb, and then beckoned
the angular lady stairward.

"Will you come in, frSulein?" said Reinhardt, and
opened the door indicated. Bis own countenance ex-
panded at the gush of warm air that ruslied out upon
them.

Sarolta came in slowly.

"iVa — this is something!*' said the tenor, divesting
himself of his fur coat and approaching the rose-
china stove.

The small, round room was furnished In velvet that
had once been crimson, but was now faded to a colour

108 THE COMPOSER

resembling the lees of red wine. There were hangings of
the same round the walls, festooned with gold bridd and
trinmiings so tarnished as to be almost black. Through
the grimy, high, square windows, only a dim green light
filtered in through the overgrowing shrubbery outside.

"Will you not sit, PrSulein Sarolta?"

The girl stood, frowning.

"What did the man mean," she asked abruptly, "by
hisFrauTante?"

A moment the tenor was puzzled.

"FrauTante? How?"
Frau Hegemann!" she exclaimed, impatiently.
So. Aha! Mark is a wag. The good lady is no
real aunt to the doctor. Only — " he dropped his voice,
"only the aunt of his poor wife, you know. *'

"How!" cried Sarolta in her turn. She could not
explain it to herself, but the word was like a blow. "His
wife? Whose wife?"

"Did you not know? Is it possible, frSulein, to be
here so long, and not know?"

"No one tells me anything."

"After all, there is little to tell. Lothnar's wife is
ill. It is no good making a secret of it — she is mad.
Mad — shut up! She is Frau Hegemann's niece. He
went to see her yesterday; that is why, no doubt, he sent
for Frau Hegemann to-day. "

Sarolta sat down; a weakness had taken her in the
knees. She had crimsoned and grown very hot, first;
now she felt cold even in the dose room. She was glad it
was so dark. • • • She had not known, she had never

THE COMPOSER 109

guessed, that Lothnar was married. Married — and his
wife mad; how terrible! Was that why his face was so
lined, his manner so harsh, his air sometimes so wild
and stem? — "How could he have married a niece of that
horrid Frau Hegemann?'* Almost unconsciously she had
formed the words aloud. Reinhardt, standing with his
back to the stove, a towering figure in the odd little room,
stroked his beard musingly.

"^cA, GotU who can tell? He was very young! Na
— not twenty. And they say she was beautiful. They
had great poverty together. And Frau Hegemann helped
them — I believe she took them in when they were
starving. She had a pension then in Heidelberg. Ach,
those were days ! He has told me a little of them — FrSu-
lein, they wanted him to be a teacher in a school! Him!
Lothnar! But he knew himself, knew his genius. There
was struggle, there was despair. He had to eat a bitter
bread, the great one. Na^ he broke loose in the end; and
when the turn of the wheel came, then she had gone
mad. • • • Well, he ate the Hegemann's bread once
and was under her roof. That he cannot forget; and
now he protects her. You understand?"

"Will his wife ever get better?" she breathed at last.
Sarolta had listened with parted lips, her hands in their
shabby gloves clutching each other as she sat.

Beinhardt shook his head.

"I fear not — I fear not. They even say she is worse.
Last time he told me she is grown like an old woman,
and her hair that was golden is quite white. "

Sarolta had a sudden sigh; something secret and evil

110 THE COMPOSER

whispered within her that she was glad that Lothnar's wife
should look like an old woman — that her hair, once golden,
should be white; glad, too, that she would never be better.

''You are to come up," said Mark, the servant, ap-
pearing with his grin.

As they followed him Frau Hegemahn crossed them in
the hall. Sarolta fancied that the woman looked at her
more sourly than ever — malevolently almost. She
noticed that one knobby hand, in its black-knitted glove,
was clasped round a folded envelope.

"She has been making her report," thought the girl.
**He has given her money. "

Her heart swelled with a sense of disdain, mixed with
fear. "Yet perhaps," she reflected, "it is her pleasure
to spy and repeat; and because she once helped and fed
him he is patient and has to listen."

"Go right up, please, Herr Reinhardt, while I put the
GnE Frau in the droschke, " called the man in his uncere-
monious, yet not disrespectful manner. "The Hen-
Doctor will send you home," he added.

As Sarolta went meekly up the stairs behind Rein-
hardt, she was conscious in some subtle manner that
Frau Hegemann was angry at having to leave her behind,
and in the satisfaction of this thought her momentary
misgiving passed.

"-4cA, thou?" cried Lothnar in a glad voice.

He did not get up as they entered; he was sitting
in an enormous, shabby, leather armchair, that con-
trasted singularly with the delicate Empire furniture
sparsely scattered throughout the very large room.

THE COMPOSER 111

This had evidently been one of the chief salons of the
Schloss. A couple of worn Aubusson carpets seemed lost
upon the sea of a once polished floor. Even the two grand
pianos made small impression of bulk Some of the win-
dows had no curtains; and in spite of black iron stoves,
the pipes of which ruthlessly perforated the once white
and gold panelled walls, the air of the place was chilly.

Lothnar sat, his hands hanging limply over the arms
of his chair He smiled; but the girl thought his face
was tired and sad She wondered how much yesterday*s
visit to his mad wife had to do with those lines of painful
thought which furrowed his forehead. Did he love her
still? ... or was it only the horror of it? . . .

"So thou art there, thou true one," the Master went on.
"Embrace me then!"

And Sarolta, lingering on the threshold, saw the fair
giant bend his head and kiss the rugged face. She
had lived among artists and foreigners all her life, and
the sight did not startle her. On the contrary, there
was something about the bond of affection that so ob-
viously united these two that seemed to her touching.
A realization of Lothnar's immense loneliness, but for
this, came to her; and with it an odd stirring of jealousy.

"I have brought das frSulein," said Beinhardt.

Lothnar turned in his diair to look at her; then he
beckoned. "Come here, du kleine." His tone was
different from any she had yet heard from him in their
brief acquaintance. She had still to learn that, compared
to the moods of genius, those of a spoilt beauty are
monotonous. To-day, if Lothnar was tired and sad.

112 THE COMPOSER

he was unwontedly gentle. His eyes were kind; veiled
was that glance of flame; his air was paternal.

He put out his hand; and for the first time she felt those
long fingers close round hers.

**Na — what do you think, Friedel?" Retaining her
hand as if it were that of a child, the composer looked up
at his tenor. "Shall we make an Iphigenia of that, dost
think? Speak, Achilles! Will she be worth fighting
for?'' Reinhardt's clear, full gaze rested thoughtfully
upon her.

"We have not simg together yet, since you did not wish
it; but I have heard her once. The voice "

He broke off and smiled so warmly, so encouragingly,
at the girl, that she flashed back a grateful smile. A
moment, like the gleam of steel out of the scabbard,
Lothnar's piercing gaze went from one to the other;
then the veil dropped over them again.

"She can attack the note, anyhow," he said, "for that,
Costanza never fails me. But for the rest — well, we
must see, we must see. Frilulein," he released her
hand, "take a chair, please. A little more to the right
— so — that I may see you. And thou, Friedel, hast
brought the song I sent thee?"

Reinhardt opened his tightly buttoned frock-coat, and
produced a roll of manuscript music.

"Ah, Master," he said impulsively, "it is colossal, it
is unspeakable, it is worthy of you! . . . What can
I say?"

"Say no more, but see that you are worthy of it, dear
one. Na — sing it. Sing it to me now!"

THE COMPOSER 113

He leaned over and reached for the bell with the impa-
tient hand of one who resents the slightest delay. There
were slow, firm steps upon the stairs, and an elderly man
with a fan-like brown beard sprinkled with gray entered
gravely into the room. Sarolta recognized Herr Webel,
the conductor.

She was struck once more, with his bourgeois stolid
appearance. Here was none of Lothnar's rugged majesty
of aspect; none of the Viking beauty of Beinhardt.
Where WebePs head was not bald it was close-cropped.
His figure was tuberous, his manner heavy and business-
like» he wore spectacles. She was no physiognomist
to read the serene power in the dome-like forehead, the
acute and self-confident intelligence of the glance behind
the spectacles, the artistic development of the brow over
the eyes.

**Mein Bester/* said Lothnar, before the newcomer
could pronounce a word. "Time for greetings presently!
Just now I am in a hurry. Der Achilles da — my Achilles
must sing ! Now, Friedel ! "

In silence Webel took a seat at the nearer piano.
There was a deliberation about the man that disclaimed
the least approach to flurry.

Reinhardt spread out the score; but Webel struck
without even glancing at it.

From the first chords a singular emotion took posses-
sion of Sarolta. Was it thus with all Lothnar's music,
she wondered; and recalled the unforgettable impression
of the "Prometheus" evening.

"Stop!" cried Lothnar, abruptly.

114 THE COMPOSER

The conductor's hands feQ from the piano, and Bein-
hardty filling his mighty chest for the first note, arrested
himself open-mouthed.

**In GoUes namenr* said Lothnar irritably, ''take oS
your hat, f rttulein. How can one think of Iphigenia in
a hat? A hat like that! Ah, that is better; and if
one would loosen one's hair a little. Ach, hrcma / • . .
Look at her, Friedhelm; now so can it begin!'*

CHAPTER X

Sabolta had heard music ahnost since her birth.
In the happy-go-lucky, scrimmagy, out-at-elbow estab-
lishment in Maida Vale one standard at least had been
held high — that of pure art. The ethics of the company
the Mosenthals frequented may have been misty, their
own religious tenets of the most elementary description,
but the smallest Mosenthal child would have considered
himself disgraced if he had failed to detect a false harmony
anywhere, or the first shade of flatness in a violin string.
With their bread and milk, they had, so to speak, ab-
sorbed great ideals, and had chattered of Gluck and.
Beethoven, of Wagner and Strauss, in as many tongues
as there were nationalities in their blood.

The trivial lilt, the obvious, commonplace musical
phrase, were things of scorn to them; and constant, bitter
had been their gibes on Pringle teaching and Pringle
songs.

Though Sarolta had chosen to blind herself to the
truth of this drastic home criticism, excited by Lady War-
borough's enthusiasm and that of her friends, and backed
by Mrs. Mosenthal (for obvious reasons), in her heart she
had always known the true metal from the pinchbeck.

Her year's training with Madame Costemza's, during
which she had had further opportunities of hearing the

115

116 THE COMPOSER

best music — classical or new epoch-making — throu^
the best interpreters, had further prepared her to appre-
ciate Lothnar.

The huge rising genius of the man had flung its ray
into the professor's domestic circle, long before his name
had become accepted by the ''critics"; and the evening
of ''Prometheus" had been an unforgettable revelation.
Yet it seemed to her, as she sat in the dilapidated
music-room of the Altschloss this day, that she realized,
for the first time, the full glory of the human voice; that
never had her soul been so filled with agony and bliss
as by these trial strains of "Iphigenia."

It was Reinhardt, the blonde giant, who stood there;
his absurd frock-coat floating loose, the waistcoat Frau
Reinhardt must have embroidered for him heaving with
every measured breath; yet to Sarolta at this moment,
a divine being!

Afterward when her intelligent mind had grasped as
much of the art of Lothnar as it is possible to understand
apart from the incomprehensible flame of genius, she
grew to appreciate how he had made use of simple, ap-
pealing, antique themes, of strange, forgotten rhythms,
with all the resources of modem knowledge and
craftmanship. Now she only knew what she felt.

She had yet been denied acquaintance even with the
scheme of the opera. Classic knowledge had not been
included in the curriculum at Maida Vale. Who Iphi-
genia was, and what her fate; why Achilles — familiar
name of some type of invincible hero — broke his great
soul in such wrath and lament about her, she knew not.

THE COMPOSER 117

But when Reinhardt fell silent at last upon an outburst
that only the supremest art and the most perfect purity
of tone saved from being a roar — a roar akin to that of
a wounded lion — it seemed to her as if her heart stopped
beating; as if nothing mortal could hearken to such pas-
sion and live.

The shattering vibration beat into silence; then
Lothnar rose to his feet and spread out his arms.

"ilcA, dw/" he said.

It was the same exclamation that had greeted the
tenor's entrance but charged now with what a world of
meanmg! Again the composer clasped his interpreter
by the shoulders. **Thou!" he repeated.

It seemed enough. Tears sprang to Reinhardt's eyes
and ran quite openly down into his beard.

^^That I should have pleased you!" he said huskily.
Then he wiped his forehead. "It is heartrending!
It is gigantic!"

Herr Webel sat on at his piano, without moving a
muscle. His eyes were fixed on the score, now; and pres-
ently he began to strum out a passage, two or three times
in succession, as if tasting the weird rhythm of it to
the utmost.

Lothnar passed with a startling rapidity from this
moment of emotion to another mood: "And now, for
her!" He shot his finger out toward Sarolta. "Where
is the score? Let her sing the answer."

Webel dropped his hands from the keys, in the atti-
tude of one waiting. In contrast to his imperturbability,
the agitation of the other two was almost comic.

<

118 THE COMPOSER

'*But» dear Master!" exclaimed Reinhardt, grabbing
his fair curls with a gesture of despair. ''Have I misun-
derstood? Were they not your own orders? Did you
not bid me hold back the score? She cannot sing it
— the thing is impossible."

And Sarolta had sprung to her feet with a cry:

"Herr Beinhardt, what am I to do?"

**Achf wasr* ejaculated Lothnar. His bushy brows
were heavily drawn together. "What is this?"

It was to her the fulminating question was hurled.

**I do not even know what it is all about!" blurted out
the girl in her extremity. "They would not let me as
much as buy the book. "

*McA, wasl^* he said again. His eyebrows worked.

''Have I all misunderstood, then?" said Reinhardt
in a higher tone of distress. But already the Master's
mind had realized and leaped again.

"Did I say so? True, true! No; it is right. Better so.
Better so ! " He waved fiercely to check any further discus-
sion on a matter settled; then turned once more to Sarolta:

"So you don't even know the story? Well, that
pleases me. I shall tell it you. Then you shall sing.
And then we shall see."

He laid his hand upon her shoulder; it took all her
strength to remain erect beside him under the touch.

"Look at me," he ordered, "Now try to under-
stand. If you are to be singer of mine, you must put
your spirit where I wish; at my bidding. Look at me.
I am not Lothnar: I am Agamemnon — Agamemnon,
the King."

THE COMPOSER 119

To her dilated gaze, the man, as he spoke, assumed
another aspect. There seemed to flow from him, even
from his hair and beard, some atmosphere of royalty
beyond the comprehension of modern thought. "He
says he's a king,'' she told herself. "He looks like a kind
of god!" She remembered the Wotan of the days of her
Wagner worship: some such kind of god as that, angry
yet subtle, swift and fierce; aye and wounded in the
spirit, even as a man might be and yet remaining a god.

" You are my daughter," went on the solemn, compelling
accents. "Understand that — my daughter, Iphigenia,
the virgin sprung of my house. My glory — my glory
and my joy!"

The harsh voice here took a sudden inflection. Had it
been as musical as Reinhardt's most exquisite note, it
could not have conveyed so keen a sense of pain. "And
I have sent for you to my camp by the iEgean Seas, where
I and my legions lie idle because of the wrath of the
goddess, while the honour of all Hellas waits upon the
avenging of our arms. ... I have sent for you,
Iphigenia, because in you alone there is help."

Sarolta flung back her head in unconscious pride,
responsive to the clarion call of those last words. But,
as her eyes met those of Lothnar's, they fell before some
horror she found in them.

"I have offended the goddess, and she will have sacri-
fice. Do you understand? You have been told that
you are here for your bridals; that Achilles, the hero
among heroes, is your chosen spouse. Even now, your
mother, who loves you, makes ready for the feast and

120 THE COMPOSER

prepares your wedding rfdment. But it is to no man,
thou virgin, that offering of thee is to be made."

He bent his head and drew her closer to him by that
paralyzing grasp.

"Thou art my child and my beloved; but what the
Dread One asks from thee and me, that we must do."

"What is it?"

She spoke in a whisper, hardly knowing that she did so.

"Death," he said.

If he had told it to her as a gladness, an honoured dig-
nity, that she should be chosen to die for so great an end,
the something passionate and high in her soul would have
leaped to the pictured sacrifice in delight. But it was the
utter fear of the doom, the misery and hideousness of
it, that he meant to bring home to her. And he did so
with a touch so n^rciless that she almost felt as if she were
indeed the helpless girl flung from her height of innocent
joy and loving anticipation into this nightmare depth.

She did not hear Reinhardt's expostulation:

**Achf Master, you are frightening the child. It is
only a fable, after all, FrSulein Sarolta!" Hypnotized,
she felt herself drawn to the piano; she saw how Lothnar
swept the impassive Webel from his seat, and himself
took his place; heard that broken, muffled beating
accompaniment that had haunted her ever since the
afternoon in Paris.

"Sing," he commanded over the tragic sobbing beat.
"Plead for youth, and love, unhappy doomed child!
Plead against thy father's anguish."

He struck the singing notes of her stammering lament;

THE COMPOSER 121

and, hardly knowing how she did it, she lifted her young
voice, higher and higher, in more bewildered cries of pain
and prayer. She knew no words as yet — so it had to
be these mere notes, flung loose; as it were, birdlike. She
was never to realize herself how sweet and pitiful they fell.

All at once, it seemed to her as if Death were actually
upon her, and the terror of it beyond endiurance.

**AcK nein, nein, I cannot!" she exclaimed, covering
her face with her hands, and broke into tears, sobbing
and shuddering. "Have pity on me!"

Was it Iphigenia pleading against the sentence, or
merely Sarolta Vaneck, breaking under the ordeal?

Then, at the sound of her own sobs, she awoke to what
she had done, with a cold realization. She had proved
herself unfit, had flimg away her chance: she had failed
utterly.

Keeping her face hidden in her hands, she stood waiting.

She caught Reinhardt's gasping ejaculation. Her
heart sank still further: he too knew it was finished, then!
She heard Lothnar rise from the piano, noisily pushing
his diair away. Once more now his touch was on
her sihoulder.

**Unsinnr^ he was grumbling in his beard. "iVa —
na — weep now if you must. Afterward thou shalt be
glad!" He turned, as he spoke, toward Friedhelm:
"It works itself out, does it not? How those Greeks
understood! First tears, then courage. So it is with
women. We men storm first, and then, perhaps, weep.
Glad wilt thou be, that I tell thee. Glad thou wilt
die — when the time comes, Iphigenia!"

122 THE COMPOSER

Once more the mood changed with him.
"And now, children, practise this, pretty, together!
Daily. Daily. And thoroughly. Is it widerstood?''

All the way home, through the bitter white mists that
had gathered along the frozen roads to the dull sordid-
ness of her dwelling-place, Sarolta was silent. She felt
dreamily tired, as one who has fought and gained a battle.
But her heart was jubilating, and like a song of triumph
the words ran in rhythmic repetition in her ears :

"Dw toirst froh sein. . . froh zu sterhen, . . das
sag ich dir, Iphigenia,**

CHAPTER XI

"Johnny, Johnny!" cried Lady Caroline, "what is
the matter with you? You don't listen to a word I say.
You've grown so dull, Johnny. I can't imagine what's
come over you."

Sir John Holdfast looked at his godmother with some-
thing of the inarticulate misery of the dog in his honest
eyes. He had a way indeed of being dog-like, whether in
spirits or out of them.

"I've noticed it," proceeded the lady, "ever since I
came back to London. But really now, last night,
Johnny, you were beyond everything. It was such a
nice little party, too, and I put you beside the prettiest
girl in London, and I don't think you so much as opened
your lips to her."

"I'm very sorry," said Sir John limply.

"What is the good of my having a house for the season
if you're going to behave like this? I thought we'd have
all kinds of fun together! . . . And they tell me you've
taken to the opera. Wagner, too! Now, Johnny, what is
the meaning of this? What reason on earth can make
you — you — want to go and sit out all through the
•King'?"

"To listen to the music, I suppose. That's what
fellows go for, don't they?"

128

124 THE COMPOSER

''Pooh — nonsense! You, Johnny? You can't teD
'Pop Goes the Eong* from *God Save the Weasel!' Now,
the truth. Who do you go with? "

"Nobody."

The accents were too sincere to be doubted.

"WeU, then," said Lady Caroline, unctuously, "you're
in love. Ah!" as she saw the colour mounting to his
sunburnt cheek — "you are in love! That's the mystery.
Isn't she kind? Won't she have you?" Incredulity
was in those heightened tones.

"I hope it's not a married woman. Oh, Johnny,
Johnny! Now, my dear boy, let me tell you that at
your age that's the very dickens! Of course I know it
simply means that you ought to marry. It's very un-
selfish of me to say so, because I should lose you, of course,
and hate your wife. Oh, yes, I should. But I'll pick
you out a nice one all the same. What a pity you wouldn't
look at little Lettice Vavasour last night! She's young,
she's clever, she's pretty. And she's got money, Johnny."

"I don't want money."

"Nonsense — everybody wants money! What with
the Budget and that dreadful Uoyd-George, how do you
know that he won't walk off with your mines next year
— and then where will you be? "

The young man seemed unstirred by the awful prospect.
He bent his head dejectedly and contemplated the
carpet.

Both his nice sunburnt hands were resting on the top
of his cane.

His godmother surveyed him with a kindly, troubled

THE COMPOSER 125

glance, noting the while approvingly how the crisp brown
hair rose from the narrow parting. Could any girl be
such a fool as to refuse John Holdfast? Could any
woman be hard-hearted enough to flout him?

All at once he looked up. For a whole year he had
carried his burden in silence. But there comes a moment
when even the most reserved feel impelled to confidence;
and Johnny was too simple to be consciously reserved.

"You remember that day when I took you down to
Warborough House two years ago?" he asked.

"Dear me — yes; you don't so often take me to parties,
Johnny, that I am likely to forget it. And I can't say
you shone in your attentiveness that day. Dumped me,
with my sprained knee, with that stupid Mary Mauprat
and her ugly daughter. What about Warborough House?"

"Oh, nothing, only it began there."

"Did it?" cried his godmother excitedly. Alertly
she began to pass in mental review the likely charmers,
married or unmarried, seen by her that afternoon, to
whom he might have lost his heart.

"Certainly you were odd," she pondered candidly.
"Well, you may as well tell me who it is."

"You don't know her — at least, I don't think you do.
She — she — it's a Miss Vaneck, and she sings."

" Sings," repeated Lady Caroline with a piercing scream.
"John Holdfast, if you, too, have gone and made a fool

of yourself with one of those Aldwych creatures, I'll **

she broke off, choking. And, as he did not immediately
answer her, she took a fresh breath and proceeded in
wrathful anxiety :

126 THE COMPOSER

"Now, Johnny, for heaven's sake listen to me. I
know it's the fashion, and all that. And you silly boys
think you've done rather a fine thing, when you've handed
over your name, your fortune, your honour to one of these
. . . these terrible little wretches. ... In my day
it was bad enough, heaven knows, but* at least it was not
the smart thing to marry them. Of course, I know she's
only just eighteen. They all are. They're all alike as
two peas, paint and hair and teeth. Listen, Johnny!
poor Cassandra Merehaven asked me to meet her
daughter-in-law, the other night. She's trying to make the
best of her, poor thing; and, oh, my dear boy! there she
was — she was Zarah Flower, you know — and there
she sat with the Merehaven diamonds on her tousled,
dyed head, and a lovely French dress on. Oh, yes,
pretty enough in her painted way; but it wasn't that.
Lots of people paint and dye! Johnny," she leaned for-
ward and touched him impressively on the arm — "her
hands, Johnny!"

"Oh, I say," said Johnny, goaded. "It isn't anything
of that sort. It's — Lady Warborough started her; had
her taught, you know. She's not got any dye in her hair,
nor paint on her cheeks; she's quite young, and her hands
— " he paused: how many a time he had stared longingly
at those slender, pale hands of Sarolta's, with their vivid
trick of gesture, and that way they had of folding them-
selves fiercely one across the]other as if she were clasping
destiny! How often he had wanted to take them into
his — those disdainful delicate hands.

"Her hands are all right," he went on lamely. "And

THE COMPOSER 127

she's not been on any stage yet.'' He winced as he
spoke, as if the word hurt him. ''She's going to be an
opera singer."

Lady Caroline sat bewildered, nonplussed. John
Holdfast in love with an opera singer! That seemed
about as incongruous a situation as could be devised.
But then, by his own showing, it was only an opera
singer in the making, some slip of a girl. Lady War-
borough's prot6g6e. . . » She knew Vera Warborough's
swans!

''Dear me!" she ssdd at last, "it sounds dreadfully silly.
She wants to be an opera singer, does she? It does not
always come oflf, Johnny, you know. And "

"She's going to appear next month," said John. He
drew a printed announcement from his breast pocket
and laid it on Lady Caroline's lap. " Her name is there —
Sarolta Vaneck. I haven't seen her since she went to
that place. She won't let me come to her — and I wish
I was dead."

But Lady Caroline caught up the announcement with
a staccato cry, as certain words in large print caught
her eye. "Lothnar!" "Iphigenia!" "Prankheim!" "But,
heavens, Johnny, you don't mean to say . . . ?"
she fumbled among her laces for her eye-glass, and,
after a closer inspection, proceeded: "My dear boy,
this is x)ositively thrilling. Everybody's talking about
it! Every one wants to go. They say it's almost im-
possible to get seats now for months! Lothnar! Count
Wenndorf was talking about him last night. I'd give
my eyes to go."

128 THE COMPOSER

Sir John Holdfast dropped back into his moody atti-
tude. **I'd give something to go too. But — she wrote
and told me not to. And now she won't answer my
letters at all. Hang it all, sometimes I wish I was not a
gentleman." -

'^Perhaps it's just as well," said his godmother consol-
ingly. ''After all, Johnny, you'd only make a fool of
yourself! You can't marry an opera singer."

"Can't I? I jolly well would — if she'd have me.
I'll never have any one else."

"Is it as bad as that?"

"It could not be worse," said John Holdfast solemnly.
"Look here, godmother; the first instant I saw her, I
knew it was all up with me. And for two years there
has not been an hour — upon my soul, I know what I'm
saying; if I do sleep, I dream of her — there has not been
an hour that I don't think of her. I'd have cut my right

hand oflE to keep her from the stage. But she have

you ever been to that *Ring' thing? I suppose you have.
Well, there's a woman singing in it now. She's doing
Briinnhilde, a kind of goddess, you know, with her
helmet and her breastplate, who comes flying down the
rocks. Well, she reminds me of Sarolta — not in face,
because she's red hair and all that, and Sarolta's dark —
but there's a kind of fire about her. . . . Oh, I can't
explain! And, you know, she hates the thought of love,
at first "

He broke off. Lady Caroline was listening in amaze-
ment open-mouthed. She had thought pleasant, empty-
headed Johnny incapable of making so long a speech.

THE COMPOSER 129

much less of anything approaching the sentimentality
it indicated.

*'But BrUnnhilde was made to love in the end/' she
remarked at length.

The young man lifted his eyes and looked at her. "Yes,"
he said heavily. Then he blurted out: "That's just it.
She's that kind. When she does love, it will be that
way. No one else will have a chance. She'U just leap
into the iGre."

At another moment Lady Caroline would have been
amused at the quaint manner Johnny had jumbled his
own story, and that of the opera, the singer, and the
character she acted, into one dismal parable! But the
young man's unhappiness was too deep not to command
respect.

"Why won't she have you?" asked the old lady,
not without indignation.

"Just because — oh, she says, because of the career
and all that. But it isn't that. It's just — well, I might
try forever." He gave a rueful smile. "I can't get
through to her, you see; she's on a rock like BrUnnhilde. —
But I'll never give her up." It was through his clenched
teeth that the last words came, scarcely audible.

Lady Caroline sat, absorbed in reflection, one plump,
jewelled hand softly beating her knee. Her kind heart
was stirred. She could not bear to see her Johnny with
that look in his eyes. She sighed; it did not seem so
very long ago since she had herself thought that life
could not be carried on without the one particular beloved.
She had been married very comfortably to another; and

130 THE COMPOSER

so had he. And yet — had there not always been
something lame, somethmg incomplete?

She could not, of course, approve of Johnny wanting
to marry out of his class. But, nowadays — and it
wasn't as if the girl wanted him either. And, after all,
if it made the poor boy any happier to go to Frankheim,
why should not she hold out a helping hand? She could
not afford the tickets herself, nor the journey on the top
of them; but it would mean nothing to Johnny to take
her, and it would be a delightful and amusing experience.
And every one was going. Lady Caroline was of those
who thought much of what every one did.

"Well,'' she said at last, with the air of one sacrificing
comfort, and even principle, for friendship's sake, "I
can't bear to see you like this. I am an old fool, I know.
But there, you shall take me to Frankheim, if you like.
And you shall see your singer — at least from the stalls."

John Holdfast's face did not light up in the manner
she expected.

Since she won't have me ih^ere," he said obstinately.
She can't prevent you from going to see what all the
world's going to see," his godmother tartly cried. "You
needn't force yourself upon her, because you've got a seat
at the Frankheim Opera House. But once there, Johnny,
who knows if I mightn't be of use to you? I'm not for-
bidden to go and see her! Besides," she added, sapiently,
"I wouldn't give that for your chances. Master Johnny, if
you were to keep sulking in England at the most impor-
tant moment of your young lady's life. Good heavens,
I know what I should think of an admirer who wasn't

THE COMPOSER 131

ready to lead the house or fling garlands of flowers at my
feet on such an occasion. Pooh, don't talk to me about
her forbidding you to come! That's a pretty old game!
Didn't Briinnhilde have herself surrounded by flre?"

But Johnny was hardly listening any more. The vision
of Sarolta's first appearance had risen vividly before
his mind's eye. All the world was going; any one who
cared and who had the money for a ticket would be there to
applaud or condemn. He remembered how nervous she
had seemed on the night of the Mortons' concert. • . .
What, indeed, would she think of love that left her
unencouraged, unsustained at such a moment?

And if she were to prove a failure . . . ?

He had been learning all he could about singers, their
duties, their trials, lately; and he knew that no one could
quite tell, before the test, whether a new star was destined
to shine or fall. If Sarolta fell from her dangerous chosen
height, might it not be upon his breast?

"I say, godmother," he cried suddenly, "I'll keep
you to that."

CHAPTER Xn

The Frankheim Opera House was packed to over-
flowing. Besides the subscribers from the town — not
at all inclined to cede their privileges even to the
wealthiest and most distinguished guests — there was
the influx from all parts of the music-loving world. No
paper of note but had sent its critic; there were the many
amateurs who really cared; the many more who pre-
tended to care; the idle rich and the '^up-to-date d tout
jnix^ The 6rand-Duke*s party included a young Prince
of the Empire. The second Mosenthal boy had travelled
from Berlin, and found a seat in the gallery. Madame
Costanza, her handsome countenance set into lines of
sternness, to conceal the seething excitement within her
dramatic soul, sat Sphinx-like in the stage box. Frau
Hegemann's aged visage might be seen on the right of
her, and on her left a cocked-nosed, pretty face, quivering
and pale: Sady Schreiber had come from Paris with
the great teacher — neither of them had been allowed to
see Sarolta yet — and Sady wondered whether her friend
felt half as nervous as she did.

"I'm just clammy!" she whispered breathlessly into
madame's ear.

But madame's noble profile moved not by a shade to
show that she heard — if indeed she heard.

1S2

THE COMPOSER 133

Johnny Holdfast, piloting Lady Caroline toward the
seats he had secured (by a cheque that would have made
that lady gasp, had she known) » felt, as he told himself,
"jolly wretched.'* Although it was like wine to his
starved heart to be once more in the same town with
Sarolta, he had something of the sensations of a man
about to attend his rival's wedding. His only hope lay
in the girl's pubUc faUure, and it was not in Johnny to
wish for such an advantage as that. Therefore, while his
pulses beat heavily in apprehension at the thought of the
ordeal before her, he knew that the triumph he could not
pray for was his own doom. Had he loved her less or
himself more, he would not have been torn between this
double anxiety. Strong-willed John Holdfast had a
terribly soft heart.

Through this inarticulate pain of his, Lady Caroline,
more than usually loquacious, kept up a running conunen-
tary which nearly drove him to distraction.

"Johnny, Johnny ... I declare, there's Lady
Warborough ! Dear me — and she was so hoity-toity when
I spoke to her about your girl, the other day! And isn't
that Sir Arnold Pringle beside her? Yes, it is. How
charming! I'd rather hear Sir Arnold sing one of his little
songs than anything else in this world. No voice, of
course, but oh, Johnny, such art, such phrasing! Isn't
that the Mrs. Morton who gives the concerts? You
know, Johnny — the Jew woman? Don't you see, over
there? Oh, Johnny, Johnny, what are you dreaming
about! Not that I can't guess! Well, it won't be long
before you see her now. Poor Johnny! I wonder if

184 THE COMPOSER

she'll succeed. . . . You never told me what kind of
a voice she has. Dear me, I remember Mario saying
to my mother, * Quel dommage qu*eUe soit fiUe de corrUesse I '
I used to singy dear, like a linnet — contralto, of course.
I never think a dark soprano sounds right. By the
way, I hope she's not dark, Johnny? Ah, there's
Mr. Christy "

There was a sudden stir through the chattering audi-
ence — a hush, and then the simultaneous lowering of all
the lights plunged the building into a darkness full of
mystery, tense with expectation. From the invisible
orchestra the first notes stole upon the ear. They seemed
like a far-off call of triumph. Then the beat of drums,
muffled in unbroken rhythm, like the tramp of marching
feet. Louder the trumpet's call and nearer, with the
added voices of many other instruments: rushing mur-
murs among the strings, light of piping flutes, clash of
cymbals — a sense of hurry and confusion mixing with
an ordered, marching lilt.

The overture to Lothnar's "Iphigenia" had begun. A
web of sound, subtly barbaric, yet rich with the endless
resources of the modem orchestra.

Sir John Holdfast, in spite of his recent assiduous
attendance at Covent Garden, had certainly no aptitude
for appreciating such music as Lothnar's. Had he
attended the first night of "Iphigenia" out of mere curi-
osity or idleness, his criticism would probably have been,
"Rummy kind of stuff"; but as it was, he had no eyes,
no ears, no senses for anything that was not Sarolta.

The feelings that gripped his heart when the slight

THE COMPOSERi 135

figure in its white draperies first ran in upon the stage,
arms outstretched to greet Agamemnon, were all pain
to the honest youth. He felt those hundreds of eyes
fixed upon his beloved and resented them as a personal
outrage.

There was a rustle of emotion through the house, as
the first notes of her voice rang out. Little as he knew
about music, Johnny realized that they were extraor-
dinarily pure. He knew no Grerman and had very little
notion what the drama was about; but from his Eton
days there remained a vague memory of Agamenmon's
hideous sacrifice, and he wished uneasily they had not
given her such a part. In the first act, however, the
music allotted to her was all descriptive of innocent joy,
virginal hopes, filial trust. The pathos of this was a
little lost on Johnny; nor had he the least realization of
the art that could draw so piercing a contrast between the
gaiety of the cheated girl and the agony of doubt in
Agamemnon's moody soul.

When the first act was over, there was no applause:
this was by Lothnar's stringent rule printed in red on the
programme. But Johnny remained in ignorance of this,
as also Lady Caroline, among whose accomplishments
Grerman was not. She concluded that the production
was a fiasco. For herself she was not surprised — it was
even worse than Wagner; that was all she could say.

"What a frost! Good gracious, not even a clap in
the gallery; makes one quite uncomfortable. My dear
Johnny, fancy bringing me all the way from England to
hear this! Not that I am not glad to help you, you silly

186 THE COMPOSER

boy." She patted his hand. "She is a pretty little
thing, Johnny; and she's got a nice voice, ... I pre-
fer a contralto myself. I wonder how Volga likes being
Clytemnestra. . • . Oh dear, couldn't you get Sir
Arnold to come and speak to me? How bored he must
be! Johnny, do you hear me?"

''I beg your pardon," said, in good English, the Ger-
man who was Sir John's neighbour, as the latter made a
dazed effort to obey. ** It is not allowed : see, it is written
on your programme. Kindly be seated again; the pause
will be very short. "

"Good gracious," said Lady Caroline, petulantly.

The lights were lowered even as the exclamation es-
caped her, and the hidden orchestra broke into a loud
lament.

Johnny sat on resolutely. His first sensation of cold
misery was giving way to irrepressible hopes. H the
whole business was the "frost" Lady Caroline averred —
and indeed it seemed like it — by George, he had never
come across such a thing in his life; the silence had been
deadly ! Might not Sarolta take an immediate disgust to
such thankless work? Nay, it seemed to him that, had
she been personally a success, they must have applauded
her if not the music. . . . There had been a lot of
whispering and jabbering when the curtain fell, but no one
as much as dropped a single brava, and some paralyzing
sense kept him equally dumb. He told himself now that
it had been lucky: even unanimous silence is better than
one imsupported effort.

At the conclusion of the second act. Lady Caroline

THE COMPOSER 137

declared that she had been asleep, and, in the same
breathy that she had too sensitive a nature to be subjected
to such torture. She asked Johnny fiercely if there was
a single melody in the whole aff air, and Johnny was unable
to answer. Presently, however, she grew quite cheery
again, recalling her favourite airs from ** Lucia'' and
^^Kigoletto," and was moved to hum one for his benefit
when the lights went down again, and Johnny's neigh-
bour cried "Hush!"

"Thank goodness, this is the last act, anyhow," sighed
the lady, resigning herself.

Lothnar's librettist was a scholar and poet of stand-
ing and the book had been kept singular y c ose to the
antique original But Lothnar would have none of the
**Dea ex machina^* solution, which he characterized —
with that arrogant frankness of his — as lazHer DummheiL
His opera ended on that utmost po nt of tragedy when
Iphigenia goes forth, high-hearted, to her doom. It
was only the sudden strength of spirit in the frail body
that redeemed the utter awf ulness and desolation of the
story. As it was, many eyes were dim in the great audi-
ence; and in the pause that fell for one breathless moment,
after the last note had died away, some one sobbed
audibly.

Then there rang at last such a simultaneous burst of
acclamation from every part of the house, that it broke
upon the ear like an explosion. Men and women stood
up; some sprang on their seats, calling, clapping, waving
handkerchiefs.

Johnny gaped dumfounded; then suddenly the frenzy

188 THE COMPOSER

seized him too, aad he shouted his English "hurray,
hurray!" — much as a soldier will cheer in the charge
which he knows means death to him.

Suddenly the purple velvet curtains were flung apart.
The young man held his breath; but instead of the frail,
lovely figure he expected, there rushed to the front a
tall, ungainly man, with death-white face, dishevelled
hair and beard. While you could count ten, this strange
being stood facing the clamour of applause hurled at
him with much such a countenance of defiance as a man
might have opposed to execration. His hands were
clutching the curtains on either side of him; his eyes,
looking out across that swaying crowd, flamed and yet
seemed to see nothing.

Four or five wreaths came hurtling toward him; the
next instant he was gone.

As Lothnar strode back across the stage, Webel and
Reinhardt — still in his glittering accoutrements —
sprang to meet him. He embraced them both without a
word; then Reinhardt cried out — ^loud enough to overcome
the clamour ringing on the other side of the curtain,
while the tears that emotion easily wrung from his simple
nature ran down his cheeks:

" Master, go back — hear how they call "

"Go back! to be pelted with green stuff!" cried
Lothnar. His face was working as if in a violent rage.

Suddenly he caught the young giant to him again;
his ice-cold fingers gripping the naked, braceleted arms.

**Mein besseres Ich — my better self!" he muttered

THE COMPOSER 1S9

through his teeth. *'Thou, too, old machine," he said,
turning then on Webel and patting his shoulder as if he
were a child. "I am content with thee."

The storm rose and fell behind the curtain more fit-
fully — there was less clapping but more shouting.
They call for the artists," said stolid Webel.
'Let them call," retorted Lothnar. "He or she that
steps outside that curtain sings no more for me!"

Then he swept the stage with those eyes of pale fire.
A hesitating group of men, Agamemnon and others of the
cast, stood watching him anxiously, not daring to ap-
proach. Lothnar took a step forward and held out
his hand; but even as Agamenmon clasped it, the com-
poser's glance wandered:

"Where are the women?"

"Madame Volga has gone to her dressing-room,"
said Webel. "She is very much annoyed that she may
not take her call. "

" Pshaw ! — Where is the little one? Na, I will find her
for myself. The noise there gets on my nerves. What
do they understand, in the end, of me or of my work?
Nothing, nothing. . . • Dogs that bark together. "

Reinhardt at his shoulder, he went, grumbling, up
the stairs that led to the dressing-rooms. As he knocked
at Sarolta's door, the tenor left h'm and retired to his
own cell.

It was the girl herself who opened; she stood on the
threshold pale and trembling. Lothnar halted before
her, staring at her for an appreciable time in silence;
then, without making the slightest movement to touch

140 THE COMPOSER

her, he said a few words in a low voice, turned on his heel,
and strode o£P.

"You — I kiss you in my soul/'

These were the words he had spoken.

When Madame Costanza and Sady rushed in upon
Iphigenia, they found her sitting, with her hands clasped,
a smile upon her lips. To their embraces and acclama-
tions, their kisses and tears, she had scarcely a word
of response.

She went through the rest of the evening as one in a
dream. Afterward, looking back upon it, she could re-
member nothing definite beyond that moment in which
Lothnar had looked at her, had pierced her to the soul
with those blue flaming eyes, and had spoken that unfor-
gettable thing: "I kiss you in my soul. " . . .

'^Non, Scoutez/^ said Madame Costanza to the appeals
of Sady, backed by those of an effusive young Mosenthal.
"Leave her alone, the poor little one, she is not fit for
all this noise to-night. Ah ga, let her be, I tell you!
Leave her in the clouds! Yes, yes, go home, petiie.
Go to your silence and your visions. You'll touch earth
soon enough! Supper? It is who will sup. Ahy ouiy
it hollows one, those emotions! Come, my children!"

She caught Sady on one side, and Chopin Mosenthal on
the other, with a firm grip.

"But first, where is Lothnar? Where is that demon,
that angel? Shall I not embrace him? I tell you I will
embrace him. Run, Chopin, my son. Find out for me
if there is still a morsel of him left to embrace. **

THE COMPOSER 141

But Chopin Mosenthal, the Grand-Duke's equerries,
several excited critics from London, Paris, and New York,
not to speak of compatriots, were to hunt in vain that
night for the composer of ^'Iphigenia." Lothnar had
passed, meteor-like, and was now, with only Beinhardt
beside him, driving away through the dark side AUeen
of the Park back to the well-defended solitude of his
Schloss.

There was silence between the two men. Reinhardt
was aware that, in the Master's present state of nerve
tension, even a look might be more than he could bear.
It was only when the great man was seated in his padded
armchair, his long, irritable fingers absently filling the
china bowl of a pipe, that conversation began again. The
tenor, excellent fellow, was secretly longing for his own
cosey nest and the dutiful ministrations of his Bertha.
But the tie that bound him to Lothnar was one of para-
mount closeness; he knew himself needed. Only to him
would the genius unburden his mind of the hundred and
one causes of exasperation which the triumphant per-
formance of his work had produced in him to-night. The
bassoon that had been half a second late on the great
blast; the flatness of a certain violin passage; the want
of perfect unison in the sweeping accompaniment of the
seven harps. And Agamemnon

''Agamemnon leaves me singularly doubtful. The
Kerl lacks classic dignity : he remains German. A German
paterfamilias! iVa, he was nervous, as you say. . . •
But that Volga! Why did I ever have her? She is
Italian and of the worst traditions! It's in her blood.

142 THE COMPOSER

Friedel .i. . she sang to the audience, she sang
to the grand-ducal box. She sang as if she had been
at La Scala. Donnerwetterl what is that you say?
The voice? I'll grant you the voice • . . rich, roll-
ing out like Burgundy, strong and dark. . • . Ach^
she could be tragic — the slut! But she'd rather be
Covent Garden! I'll never make her creature of
mine. , • She'll never fit into my scheme. . . .
She'll have to march. Hearest thou, Friedel — march!
• • March she shall. "

Amid clouds of Kanaster smoke, he leaned his pale
face forward, twitching with anger, lined with the arduous
work and concentration of months. His voice had a
sharp tone. Anxious to lead the overstrained mind in-
to more pleasant thought, Reinhardt paused in the midst
of his second Seidel of beer to murmur soothingly that
Iphigenia had been perfect. "
Iphigenia!" echoed Lothnar. He fell back in his
chair, dropped his pipe on the table, and remained silent,
with fixed gaze. Then his moustaches twitched with a
smile. **Achy die. . . • Yes, that one is all mine.
I can make of her what I please. • . • That is as
it must be. "

Holding his glass poised on the way to his lips, Rein-
hardt turned his clear eyes full upon his Master.

'*But I?" he said, uplifting his Viking head, with an
unconscious pride. "But I — I am a free spirit. Ich
bin ein freier geist. "

Lothnar's fierce gaze softened.

''Thou?" he said, with a chuckle. ''As thou art, thou

THE COMPOSER 143

art dear to me." Then sardonic laughter shook him.
"Free? Poor soul . . . your little fat wife could pop
you into her oven, if she had a fancy to see you brown! "
He leaned deeper back into his chair and drove his fingers
into his forked beard. "Women," he growled, "women
are the Devil."

CHAPTER Xra

Up into the meagre bedroom, the bare-armed Tien-
chen brought a basket of roses, the sight of which ahnost
made Sarolta's heart stop beating. She was still in bed,
though it was past ten o'clock; but she thought that she
might henceforth brave Frau Hegemann's rules. Last
night might still seem a dream, the future might still
be wrapped in mystery: nevertheless, between the Sarolta
of yesterday and the Sarolta of to-day there lay a differ-
ence so enormous that even her child nature could not
ignore it. She knew now she was of those whom fate
had picked out to rule; and knew it as truly as if she had
been bom on the steps of a throne.

So she had lain in bed, and ordered her coffee and
brodchen to be sent up to her! This return to the inde-
pendent ways of Paris was the first sweet of her great
triumph, and she was tasting it luxuriously, when yet
another followed in quick succession — the roses!

** PrachtvoUr^ said Tienchen, dumping them on the bed.
Then she caught up the tray and departed.

Magnificent they were; Sarolta lay and contemplated
them. Deep, crimson, glowing things, with a scent so
rich as to be almost too much to bear. Such roses as a
lover would offer to his beloved! From the moment that
her eyes had caught sight of them, a wild thought had

144

THE COMPOSER 145

sprung Into her brain. Was anything too beautiful, or
too astounding to be real now? Who but one indeed in all
Frankheim would dare to send flowers to her at Frau
Hegemann's — in all Frankheim, save he who hitherto
had sternly prohibited any such tribute? And if they were
from him! • • • She hardly dared inhale the intoxi-
cating fragrance; hardly dared pursue a thought so fraught
with unbelievable joy. Yet he had caught her to his soul
last night, with a look, with words of intimate spiritual
union; and if she might be that to him — something that
his soul caressed, what more could she ask of life?

She put out her hand and timidly touched a velvet
petal; and as she did so the thought came upon her:
might she not discover a card, a letter perhaps, hidden
among the gloiy. She sat up, scarlet-cheeked; and, true
enough, there was the comer of a white envelope visible
between the crimson and the green! Again that sen-
sation, as if her heart had stopped beating, came upon her
as she drew it out.

But the first glance at the bold, black handwriting
brought a revulsion of feeling so keen that she could
have screamed like an angry child. It was Johnny!
. . . only Johnny! She flung the letter, unopened,
from her. Had she not forbidden him to approach her?
How dared he thrust himself upon her!

It was upon this storm of angry disappointment that
Madame Costanza and Sady broke into her room.

"Roses!" cried madame, halting midway, with her
histrionic gesture. "That could not fail! Aha, little
prima donna, have a care! Roses have thorns, sometimes.

146 THE COMPOSER

And how did they pass the sentry? It was as much as
the Hegemann would do to let us up the stairs! *Gnadige
Frau,* I said, V^u ^^S^ tiie bird. I have nothing against
it . . • pretty little birds must have cages — but I
taught the bird to chirp; and if you deny me, why then
we'll see what Dr. Lothnar • . • ' " She interrup-
ted her rapid flow with a sudden change of tone.
Ah ga^ Sady, but what's the matter with her?"
I don't know," said Sady, slowly. She was standing
uncomfortably by Sarolta's bed, holding her inert hand.

Sarolta, who had tried to smile welcome at their en-
trance, had now, somehow, so much trouble to keep her-
self from tears that any attempt at looking cheerful
was beyond her power. She sat upright against her little
hard pillow, a quivering underlip between her teeth, star-
ing fixedly into space.

"How now, " said madame, drawing closer, "so spoilt —
so favoured, and yet discontented? But come, come,
she's tired, Sady, overwrought. It's very easily under-
stood. I myself, I howled the whole of the first day after
my dSlhU. But then I went sharp on a high A; yes — I
who speak to you. Dieu^ how that A pursued me: a
demon with a little prong, my dears! Sady, lift oflf that
tribute, that I may embrace the child. The old maman
is very proud of thee; va, ma petite. Eh bien^ quoi?
Cry on the old one's neck if you like. Yes, cry; it
does good."

But there is nothing more styptic to emotion than such
encouragement. Sarolta gave two or three little sobs
against the large» comfortable shoulder offered to her.

I

I

THE COMPOSER 147

then f ound> surprisedly, that she did not want to ciy
after all.

"You think Dr. Lothnar is satisfied?'' she faltered.

She had had his intimate assurance that he was so;
but, after the fashion of the feminine heart, she hun-
gered for more.

"Satisfied?" screamed the lady, taking the question
in a general sense. "When was that master ever satis-
fied? I saw Reinhardt this morning. He tells me they
sat up all night, and that there was not one instrument
nor a passage it played, from beginning to end, which
the extraordinary being did not discuss, dissect, find
fault with. And, by the way, you are to have a new
maman Clytemnestra for the next performance, and
Reinhardt says you may be summoned any hour to-mor-
row to rehearse her. Yes, la Volga goes. Volga, with
that voice of glory! The only contralto in the world;
has any one heard such folly?"

Sarolta Went white to the lips.

"Did Reinhardt say nothing about me?" she faltered.

Sady, for once quicker-witted than Madame Costanza,
flung herself upon her friend's bed.

" About you, honey ! — I should think he did ! My word !
. . . Iphigenia, the gem of the whole thing! Why,
you're in everybody's mouth. Fact is, I believe you have
made that opera. Madame may say what she likes
. . . 'tis a bit beyond most people's comprehension.
But, from the moment you came — you darling, little white
thing, with yoiur darling sweet voice, and the pity of you,
and the prettiness of you, and the real right-down human

"I

148 THE COMPOSEB

nature of you — why, you were Iphigenia! There, honey,
I can't speak of it. But you should hear Bernhardt.
And even old grizzly says "

She paused in her vehement hugging of Sarolta to
ling a sidelong, mischievous look through her fabulous
lashes at her singing mistress. When did the latter
ever fail to rise to an opportunity for dramatic effect?
Old grizzly?" she cried in her deepest notes.
It's just a little name I've got for Dr. Lothnar,
ma'am, " said the American demurely.

^'Ah, I breathe," said madame. **I thought perhaps,
behind my back "

Sady's outcry was arrested by Sarolta, who caught
her friend pettishly by the wrist.

"What did he say? What did Dr. Lothnar say
of me?"

"Well, Herr Reinhardt said that Dr. Lothnar had
been entirely satisfied only with two of his interpreters —
you and himself.**

Sady felt she spoke flatly; but the depressing impression
she had received last night, from the moment she had
come into Sarolta's presence, was increasing upon her.
It had been an ardently longed-for meeting; but the real-
ization was full of disillusion. Sarolta had shown no
gladness to see her; she hardly wanted to kiss her back,
Sady felt; she had not asked a single question except
about herself; she was absorbed, and in her absorption
the old affection seemed to have no place.

Sady slid from the bed, and feigned to be engaged in
straightening the roses. Madame's dry comment:

THE COMPOSER 149

'^Lothnar satisfied with his two chief interpreters.
. . . Eh bien, plaignez-le/* fell upon deaf ears.
Sarolta, with clasped hands, was lost in the contentment
of an appreciation which placed her on a par with
Friedhelm Reinhardt> with the du of Lothnar's artist soul.

"Of course, poor Johnny gave you these,*' said Sady
presently, in a tone of exaggerated cheerfulness. ''He
supped with us last night. Why — this is his letter, ain't
it?" She picked up the despised document that lay,
face upward, on the floor. "You haven't even opened
it, you hard-hearted little wretch!"

"I don't want to," said Sarolta. "I told him not to
plague me here. "

She spoke with a cruel setting of white teeth, but, after
all, the passion of anger had gone from her. Had not
Lothnar given her something better than roses?

"That poor Sir John," said madame, sitting down
weightily upon Sarolta's solitary chair — "one must pity
him, all the same!" She laid a handsome, ungloved
hand upon the counterpane, regarded her sparkling rings
reflectively, and sighed.

"You need not accept him, my child," she said then,
with sudden gravity. " But you need not despise him
either. A faithful, humble love! AUeZy it is not a bad
thing to have it at the back of one's life. For this is a
very treacherous world, my little one, as kings and queens
and artists find out sooner than most. "

Sarolta shifted her head irritably, without reply.

"You may read the tiresome letter. I won't," she
said evasively to Sady.

150 THE COMPOSEB

''Bead anotlier's love-letter!" screamed madame.

''Then tear it up*/' said Sarolta.

"I guess rd better read it,** said Sady, in her pretty,
quiet way. She broke open the envelope, paused, and i

gave a sudden little mocking lau^ "listen, Sarolta!"

"Bead a love-letter aloud!** again protested Madame
Costanza, deep-chested. But Sady proceeded:

"Mt dxab Ifiss Vanbck, — I came to hear the opera. I hope
you don't mind. Everybody was coming. I liked it awfuDy.
I thought you awfully good. I wonder if you'd come to tea
with me to-day. I hear there's a place where they do you
awfuOy weU in the Park. I'm going to ask Madame Costanza
and Miss Schreiber. Bather like the old days in Paris — what ?
I should be awfuUy bucked up if you came.

" Yours very sincerely,

'*JoHN Holdfast.

" P. S. The name of the cafe is Schbns Atusicht — I hope Fve
got it right. I forgot to say Fve got a godmother with me.
Her name is Lady Caroline Pountney. She hopes you'll come."

Sady paused.

"*I thought you awf'ly good* ... 'I thought
you awf'ly good!'** said madame, in a rich, sing-song
imitation of Jobnny*s accent. "Oh, ces Anglais! Well,
my dear, with that lover you have my permission to spend
a month on a desert island!*'

"I won't go to his tea," snapped Sarolta. She was
slightly out of countenance over the unardent^contents
of the scorned letter; Madame overruled her peremp-
torily:

"Ta-ta-ta! — Of course you'll go. And so shall I.

THE COMPOSER 151

And so will Sady. It will do us all good. I know that
Schone Atissicht; we shall have Russian tea and Man-
delnkiichen. I would have gone to the Altschloss, but
Reinhardt says not a cat must go near the Master to-day!
He went to bed at six o'clock this morning. **

With one of her extraordinary explosions of vitality,
the great lady here gave vent to a most unexpected and
piercing scream

*'Mon Dieu, mon Dieul Idiot that I am!" She
thumped her solid chest, rose from her chair, and rushed
for the door.

''Sakes alive, madame!" said Sady, startled into the
use of an exclamation once familiar to her childish ears,
"what's happened?''

"The papers!" shrieked Costanza. "To think I have
not yet seen a single paper. — The Frankfurter Zeitung,
the MUnchener Allgemeiney the Tageblatt — they'll all
be coming in now, besides their local 'cabbage leaves.'
Sady, my lamb, let us run, run. We will return to the
prima donna in a minute. Ah, heaven, your first press-
notices — does not that spell life!"

If one's first press-notices spelt life, waiting for them
was, Sarolta found, a very unpleasant process. Lothnar,
and Lothnar only, had hitherto bounded her horizon; she
had scarcely cast a thought upon the opinion of the rest
of the world. And now, indeed, it was more with refer-
ence to him that she dreaded the perusal of criticisms.
Should she^be here condemned, mocked at, belittled, how
then would it be with him?

152 THE COMPOSER

The two beaming faces that, after an intolerable delay,
shone once more into her room, dispelled her sick anxiety
at one glance. It hardly needed Sady's tremulous con-
gratulations, or madame's full-blooded chant: **Io
Triumpher*

"You are made! You have arrived, my dear," cried
that lady, scattering newspapers broadcast.

Then, unexpectedly, even to herself, Sarolta's soul was
filled with disdain. She smiled without replying. Had
she not already received the only testimony she cared
for? Did it need a German paper to tell her that she had
succeeded?

"God forgive me," thought the music-mistress, "the
little one is already beyond herself!"

Sir John Holdfast's tea party at the Schone Aussichi
duly took place. He secured the whole of the small
veranda. The June weather was glorious; the Russian
tea was all that was expected; the Sandtorten and Man-
delnkuchen upheld their reputation; Sady declared that
the raspberries and cream were beyond dreams — and
Sady was a connoisseur. All his guests moreover, ap-
peared, including an unexpected one in the shape of
Chopin Mosenthal, brought by Madame Costanza.

This lady herself arrived at the rendezvous in a heated,
panting condition, but in high good-humour. She was
so full of the news she had to impart that beyond a side-
flung, "Bonjowr, modaTTie," she took little notice of Lady
Caroline when Johnny ceremoniously introduced them
to each other. Lady Caroline instantly conceived a

THE COMPOSER 153

strong dislike to the genial artist; and included in her
disfavour the long, slender, dark lad, whose black curls
actually fell over his face when he bowed — which he
did with preposterous frequency. When she discovered
that he called Sarolta by her Christian name, and further
beheld him sitting by her side, holding her hand, she
instantly and irrevocably decided that Johnny was not
going to marry into "that crew"; — not if she could
help it.

Johnny himself was not very comfortable in his mind
over this familiarity, though he was mighty scornful with
his godmother on the subject later on, protesting that
one would have "to be jolly silly" to attach importance
to a cousin.

It was madame who thrust the young violinist into
the chair beside Sarolta.

"Sit down, Chopin," she ordered in the middle of his
third bow. Then she followed suit herself; gave a jovial
"OA, ZA, W** and burst into her news:

"None of you will guess where I have been . . .
tais'toiy Chopin. . . . My friends, I come from the
Altschloss !" Seeing no enlightenment in Lady Caroline's
severe gaze, nor in Sir John Holdfast's blank one, she
proceeded with gusto: "To Lothnar! I have been to
Lothnar ! He sent for me; what do you think of that? "

Sarolta dropped her eyes on her plate, and, becoming
aware of her cousin's affectionate clasp, twitched her hand
away with a pettish: "Don't, Chop!" (To such base
uses do we come. Thus, in the Mosenthal household, had
that revered name degenerated !) It was only Sady , after

154 THE COMPOSER

ally who expressed due excitement. But Madame G>s-
tanza required no outward stimulus: her appreciation of
the rich drama of life was innate.

''Yes, he sent for me, and you will never guess what
for • • • to oflfer me — me!" she struck her bosom
with an open palm — " the part of Clytemnestra ! Conceive
it! . . • And the most comic of it all is that for two
minutes • • . two minutes! I was on the very point
of consent. — Ah, ce Lothnarl What a way he has!
One is never quite one's self with him. Bom to make the
world march, celui-ldJ But ceUe-d will not march with
him, after all. *It's settled, then,* he says. 'Settled?* I
cry. 'Nothing is settled but that you are mad, and
I very nearly so. No — no, my friend,* I said to him; 'I
grant you that I would not make you a bad Clytemnestra.
Ahf pour Qtty rum. The whole world would have talked
of it. But, saperlipopettet I have my work, you have
yours. I found my vocation just as you found your own,
Herr Doctor. You take, you absorb. GtUl . . .
HaV nickts ddgegeni I, I give, my friend. While you
draw everything into yourself, I am putting bits of my
spirit into a thousand lives. Well, that pleases me — that
is my existence. I am not going to cut it short, even
for a space, for you. And I am too good a mother.*
Is it not so, my chicks?** She beamed from Sarolta
to Sady. *'I*m not the kind of old hen to cast the poor
littleypot^^n^ adrift.**

Here she paused, and suddenly addressed Lady Caro-
line : ** A brooding hen, madame, that's what I am — and
that's what I shall be till I die. ThankGod,** — shegave

THE COMPOSER 155

a jolly laugh — "I have big wings, and the supply of eggs
doesn't run short, I assure you, and *'

Lady Caroline put up her eyeglasses, surveyed the
speaker through them, and dropped them.

"What a terribly vulgar woman!" was her unspoken
comment.

"Well, what's the matter with her, that one?" was
Madame Costanza's.

"Oh, madame, what did Dr. Lothnar say?" put
in Sady, in a thrilled voice. Sady was nothing if not
tactful.

"JBTa chirel you remember when Wotan kills with
just one look? He looked at me like that. Sometimes
I think he believes he is Jupiter! But I am not dead.
I offered him Clare Voysey. I thought he would have
torn me in two! *What!* he cries, *the creature that had
a mouth like a cavern when I came in to you that day
in Paris!' (He has a memory like no one, that man!)
*Well,* I said, *are you not chasing Volga because she
makes her petite houchef* *\ will have Maria Seidel.
Maria Seidel • . • that's what it will be!' says
he. My poor ugly Clare has a thousand times better
voice, and so I told him. And Maria Seidel is as
inad as a hatter. *Mad,' he says, with his twisted
smile. ^Then we shall get on.' I don't know," said the
great voice trainer reflectively, "that he is altogether
wrong. Maria has temperament — temperament," she
repeated thoughtfully. "What she has got of temper-
ament — enough for twenty! Too much, far too much
for one. She makes every place hot. " Suddenly madame

156 THE COMPOSER

began to chuckle. '^I said to her one day, 'Maria, no
one will want chauffage central where you are!* "

"Johnny/' said Lady Caroline, in cuttingly distinct
tones, "will you kindly ask the waiter for more water? —
Can I offer you another cup of tea, Madame Costanza?
Do you like this caravan tea? Some people cannot
drink any other. "

The diversion was hardly as successful as it deserved.
Madame Costanza was quite as ready to discuss tea as
any other subject, but it led to a thrilling descrip-
tion of her suffering in connection with the ordinary
English brew.

"C6 giie ga vous abtme restomac!** she began.

Johnny saw that his friends were making a hopelessly
bad impression. It worried him a little on the surface,
because he liked people to get on; but it made him, if
possible, more determined than ever on his life's purpose.
He had not been quite sure whether he would make
another attempt to plead his cause during this visit. It
was not a good moment — even he could see that. But
it was horrible to think of going away and leaving
Sarolta surrounded by such strange people — the mad
lady with the temperament, the man who fancied he was
Jupiter, the curly-haired young artist who bowed and
gesticulated and dared familiarly to address his beloved
Sarolta • • . and hold her hand.

And now they were talking about the Press Notices,
and quoting them, one against the other, Sady and the
violinist. Johnny ground his teeth.

" * A more exquisite virginal apparition it is impossible to

THE COMPOSER 157

conceive. • . . * '' said Chopin Mosenthal, beginning
to read from a folded newspaper.

"Oh, but the Miinchener,'' interrupted Sady. "Did
you see that? * Perfect embodiment of Iphigenia . • .
The young dSbviante's very immaturity adding to the
"paihos,

" I didn't like that one, " cut in Sarolta, and Sady halted,
flushing. She had not seen anything wounding in the
notice, which had gone on to say that the youthful sing-
er's artlessness and want of experience were actual
assets in her favour, in the present part, and that the
world might look forward to greater and greater achieve-
ments from her when her voice should have ripened and
come to its full power.

To Sady it had seemed that these words, from one of
the most important German papers, were more encourag-
ing than the indiscriminate praise of lesser journals. It
had not dawned upon her that twenty-year-old Sarolta
could already esteem herself as beyond improvement
because of one night's success.

She fell into silence, her delicate face unwontedly grave.
The little comrade she had loved and "mothered" all
those merry days in Paris seemed somehow lost to her.
She caught young Chopin's eyes fixed upon her with a
humorous understanding in them.

"Well, Sarolta," he said then, addressing his cousin
with the Mosenthal frankness: "Oughtn't you to be
precious glad, my dear, that you're not mature yet?
When papers begin to talk of a voice as mature, it's
pretty sure to be nearly rotten."

158 THE COMPOSER

Lady Caroline here thought that she had borne enough.
She rose from her seat, and the whole group went down
together uxto the sunlit garden. Every one was glad of
the move.

Johnny's tea party had not been an unmitigated
success.

As Sarolta passed along the terrace there was an in-
terested stir among two or three groups of comfortable
German families drinking beer at the little round tables.
Her name was ejaculated right and left, in no whispers;
and the solid Teuton stare followed her with undisguised
curiosity.

Johnny, casting scowls about him, hurried to her side.
He would have given something to be allowed to teach
*' those fellows" how to behave. All he could do was to
slip his stalwart person between her and the more in-
trusive gazers. Sarolta went, her head high, with an
air of sublime indifference. But the hawk's-eyes of
Madame Costanza had mirth in them, not unmixed with
a little pity, as she watched her whilom pupil. She
pressed Sady's hand:

"Look at her, la pauvre petiiel**

Where the roads diverged by the great fountains. Lady
Caroline paused, and, with a sudden access of fine-lady
urbanity, bade a condescending farewell to Madame
Costanza. Then she addressed Sarolta.

"Good-bye! So very interesting to have met you. I
feel sure you have a brilliant future before you. I hope
one day we may hear you at Covent Garden In Italian
Opera. By the way, Lady Warborough asked me to tell

THE COMPOSER 159

you that she would be glad if you would go to see her.
She is at the Park Hotel. I asked her to join us here to-
day; but she was due at the Grand-Duchess's. Good-bye
again. I'm going away to-morrow. Perhaps we may
meet when • • . you come to sing at Covent Garden.
Johnny!"

Johnny stood facing his godmother; his hat was a
trifle at the back of his head; his legs were planted slightly
apart; his face was singularly expressionless. He might
not be very brilliant, but he knew, as he told himself
wrathfully, "what the old girl was up to," and it added
just another rivet to his resolve. For an appreciable
moment there was silence in the little group; and then the
young man said in good-humoured, off-hand tones:
I'll see you to a cab, if you want to go back. "
Oh, no, Johnny dear," said Lady Caroline with equal
cheerfulness and determination, "you'll see me home, if
you please. And you've got to pack for to-morrow morn-
ing, you know. "

Johnny gave a not unhumorous thought to those
railway and opera tickets for which he had himself so
readily paid; then, as if she had not spoken, he repeated
in the same everyday, pleasant voice:

"I'll see you to a cab."

The situation was becoming a little strained. Lady
Caroline's black eyes flashed fire. "Ungrateful boy!'*
thought she, "after my coming all this way, in the very
middle of the season, and sitting through that dreadful
opera, all because of his idiotic infatuation for that
impossible girl! I'm too good-natured."

160 THE COMPOSER

Madame Costanza did not speak; she looked on,
amused. And the young things held their tongues as was
becoming. The tension was relieved by an unexpected
encounter.

A small dapper man in a gray summer suit swung up to
them along the path with a military freedom of gait. He
hesitated at sight of the group, paused, and took off
his hat.

"Mon Dieu — c^est Sir Pringle!" exclaimed Madame
Costanza.

"My dear madame — why, Lady Caroline!" cried the
newcomer. "Ah, my dear child — give me both your
hands. I must congratulate you — I must indeed! It was
superb, wasn't it? I confess I take a little pride. • • •
As I said to Lady Warborough just now at the Grand-
Duchess's: 'She was always my best pupil!' I have left my
little tribute at your apartments, Sarolta — I may still call
you Sarolta? — with a few words, just a few words of
appreciation. Lady Caroline, I caught a glimpse of you
last night. No, not quite our style of music — a bit mad,
you know» but that's the fashion. And there are fine
things, now and then, very fine things. I'm just taking
a stroll back to the hotel through the Park. Which way —
ah — are you all going? "

Here John Holdfast accomplished what he many a
time told himself afterward was one of the sharpest
things he had ever done in his life.

"If you are going that way, Sir Arnold," he said, "will
you see Lady Caroline to a cab? — She wants to get back,
and I am on for a bit of a walk. "

THE COMPOSER 161

"De-lighted, of course," said Sir Arnold with a blank
look toward the two pretty girls and Madame Costanza's
broadly smiling face.

"Thank you, Sir Arnold," said Lady Caroline, with
much dignity. "I shall be obliged if you will accompany
me. ... In a strange town, at the mercy of the first
ruffianly cabman that comes along, I confess I do not like
to be left to drive alone. "

Madame Costanza remained motionless till the couple,
neither of whom could conceal dudgeon, had disappeared.
Then she gave her expressive chuckle:

"* My best pupil . . . !*" she mimicked. "*I confess
I take some little pride! ' " She lifted her voice and sang
a soft yodel, and then began again, with mock emphasis:

^'A little birch tree shimmered in the wood . . .
She loved the mighty oak that beside her stood. . • !

"*Not quite our style of music — eh, Lady Caroline?*"

Chopin Mosenthal exploded, schoolboy fashion, doub-
ling up in ecstasy till his black curls almost swept his knee.
Sady, caught by the infection of his mirth, stood looking
at him, laughing gaily, without understanding the full
point of the joke.

Sarolta walked impatiently away. Everybody was
tiresome to-day, she thought. She felt irritated all over;
but the real soreness lay in the knowledge that Madame
Costanza had been sununoned by Lothnar; that Bein-
hardt had sat with him all night; and that she had had
not even a little message.
Johnny saw his opportunity and hurried after her. He

162 THE COMPOSER

knew» before he spoke that he was doing himself no good
— yea» even damaging his cause. Yet speak he must; it
seemed to him that his very loyalty demanded it. Every
moment he passed in Frankheim showed him more dearly
the odiousness of the career she had chosen, and her
unfitness for it.

"Sarolta — you can*t go on with this!" he burst
out. "It will kill you. You're looking ill already.
You've grown quite thin» you know. It's unbearable.
Oh, I say, don't you see, don't you understand? It's
dreadful for a woman, for a lady • • • Sarolta, it's
not because I'm thinking of myself, 'pon honour, it isn't.
I'm thinking of you. If you'd let me take you out of it,
you could do anything you liked. I'd not ask for myself.
I'd be cont^t. ..."

He choked. She allowed him to speak uninterrupted;
then, standing before him, gave him, between narrowed
lids, one single glance of icy contempt; and, turning on
her heel, ran back to Madame Costanza without a word.

Johnny stared after her a second or two, then lifted
his hat vaguely and walked away toward the Park gates
with great strides.

So he packed his boxes that night after all — to
Lady Caroline's dry triumph. But before he left, he
had a long conversation with Sady, which sent him on
his travels less disconsolate than he would otherwise
have been.

Nevertheless, though Sady promised and comforted,
she was herself by no means happy about Sarolta, and

THE COMPOSER 163

ventured to hint to madame some of her reasons for
anxiety. That doughty lady, however, was breezily
optimistic:

"Changed? Of course she is changed. What do you
expect her to be? She's going through a phase, my dear;
she'll come out of it again soon enough — soon enough.
When the hard work begins once more, and she learns
that the artist's career does not stop at its first stage, and
that it's not all roses, and laiu^ls, and orchids! — Eh, ekl
did you see Sir Pringle's orchids? — All this soap-bubble
nonsense will float away, and you'll find the real Sarolta
again underneath. Eh, mon Dieu, leave her to her little
triumphs! The disillusion will come soon enough!"

"It's not that, madame," faltered Sady, her pretty
forehead puckered into thoughtful lines. "She's — oh,
I don't know how to explain — she's not happy, not
triumphant, in spite of her success. She seems in a kind
of a dream all the time, and there's only one thing she
wants to talk about "

"Iphigenia, I suppose," said Madame Costanza
cheerfully.

"No," said Sady in a very low voice — "Dr. Lothnar,
madame. "

The other gave a cry of derision.

"Lothnar — is that what you are afraid of, my poor
child? Of course she's in love with Lothnar. She would
not be a human girl in this town if she wasn't. Mon
Dieul Have I not been in love in the same way from
sixteen upward? Did I not cherish a peach-stone from
the plate of Gayarre? Did I not think of a big panful

164 THE COMPOSER

of charcoal because Rubinstein gave his photograph to
my rival? Did I not — pooh» you*re a little Puritan,
Sady — you came back in the Mayflower. Loss es
schwarment It is quite good for the art> she'll have many
another."

Sady laughed, and tried to seem convinced, and to
convince herself. But when she, in her tiun, steamed
away from Frankheim — they waited for the second
performance, Madame Costanza taking a hostile pro-
fessional interest in Maria Seidel's Clytemnestra — the
girl carried away an unwonted weight of despondency.
*'Sarolta was glad to see me go!" she said to herself,
and the tears she would not shed before madame seemed
to be dropping inwardly upon her anxious heart.

CHAPTER XIV

Thebb was little change in the Hegemannsche Haus
for the next week or so. The increased liberty which
had come to Sarolta from the night of her dSbut continued.
Flowers were often sent to her from unknown admirers;
and letters, some of which — the appreciation of kindly
artists — she proudly kept; others she had the good sense
to tear up and fling away as hardly worth even a thought
of anger. She saw Lothnar again during the necessary
rehearsals with the new Clytemnestra, but these were
conducted on purely business lines. She had no con-
versation with him, except a word or two on the second
night of "Iphigenia,** which left her singularly depressed.
He was in an unwontedly good-humour — whatever
impression Maria Seidel had made upon Laura Costanza,
her intensity had "satisfied" the composer. On his way
out of the theatre, leaning on Reinhardt^s arm, he crossed
the girl, cloaked and hooded, and ready to start under
FrSulein Schwank's escort.

"And one brings flowers to the Iphigenia, does not
one?" he said, his eyebrows twitching as they always did
when he was in jocular mood.

"Yes," answered Sarolta, crimsoning. A passionate
disclaimer of any desire for the forbidden tributes was
trembling on her lips, when he interrupted her.

165

166 THE COMPOSER]

**It is well — it is well. Flowers are sweet. Smell
them, FrILiilein Sarolta — smell them!"

Her heart had felt like bursting as she walked home
along the moonlit street. How far rather would she
have been still the vestal whom he "kept dose. **

It was after the fifth successful performance of "Iphi-
genia, '' to a house well-nigh as crowded as the first, that
Frau Hegemann disappeared suddenly tTom the pension,
and was not seen again for two days. When she returned,
her face was distorted by violent weeping. And the
rumoiur spread like wildfire through the house that
Lothnar's wife, her niece, was dead. The news was pres-
ently confirmed in the local newspapers. The theatre
was closed for a week; and when Dr. Lothnar resumed
his place as conductor he wore clothes of mourning.

Frau Hegemann was wrapped in crSpe, with a veil
that swept the pavement, in good national fashion. She
looked sourer than ever, and was more silent as she pre-
sided at the meals. And often those sunken eyes of hers
were red and inflamed from hidden tears.

Sarolta, who had once had an evil thought of gladness
to know Lothnar's wife doomed and disfigured, had now
no clear understanding of her own feelings upon these
death tidings. It seemed to make so extraordinarily lit-
tle outward difiFerence to any one except Frau Hegemann.

Lothnar, it was true, looked haggard when she first
beheld him again in his mourning garments; but that
might have been the efiFect of the black. She had no
speech of him then, or for many days afterward; and she
soon found herself a prey to a devouring desire to discover

THE COMPOSER 167

how far his bereavement — if such it could be called —
really affected him. Did he mourn her whom he had
once loved? Had old memories and old feelings re-
awakened in him? Was it merely release? The problem
pursued her in the life at once isolated and active that
she now led.

At last she ventured to question Reinhardt:

"Did the Master mind?"

The tenor looked at her, surprised, a second; and then
said gravely:

"Fraulein Sarolta, there are wounds that the best
friend must not probe. The doctor speaks of it not at all."

Sarolta felt dreadfully snubbed. Nor did Frau Bertha,
with whom she was subsequently invited to Kaffee^ tend
to comfort her, though she was loquacious enough. Ac-
cording to her, it was pitiable to behold Lothnar's grief.

"Not that he talks, bewahreU — that was never his way.
But I brought little Ubichchen to see him on his birthday,
by invitation, FrUulien Sarolta! Ach, I put a band
of cr&pe round the little fellow's Scotch coat, just as a
tribute, you understand. And when the Master saw it, he
said: *P/wi, how ugly is that black! Let at least the
poor child be free of it.' And then he sighed as if his
heart was breaking. So changed he is, Fraulien Sarolta. "

Though Bertha Reinhardt had a score of easy friend-
ships, and addressed most of the members of her Kaffee
KkUsch as " Schatzcheriy** " Innig geliebte "and " Theuerste,**
Sarolta was still ** Fraulein** to her. The Hof-Doktor^s
daughter could not forget the distance between her-
self and a professional singer.

168 THE COMPOSER

''Iphigenia" was given twice a week till the middle of
August. Though fashionable Frankheimeis had gone
to their cures, to sea or to mountain, long before, there
was still a steady influx of curious visitors from all
parts of the world. Indeed, had Lothnar chosen, he
could have continued to produce the opera for months
to come.

But he did not choose. On the fifteenth of the month,
his theatre was closed; he ordered his fellow- workers to
go and enjoy holidays, in the same autocratic manner
as he set them to their task.

Sarolta, still held in a state of tutelage, found that her
summer outing had been arranged for her by Madame
Costanza and her aunt. Sady — accompanied for pro-
priety's sake by the Normande — came to fetch her at
Frankheim, and the three set off for a little-known, simple
health-resort, high up in the Black Forest. There Sarolta
was ordered to drink milk and to bask as much as possible
in the sunshine. She brought away a great fatigue of
body and mind after the strain of the past year, and was
glad enough of the enforced rest.

Mrs. Mosenthal had increased her allowance, informing
her in a jubilant letter that she had invested a hundred
pounds of her salary for her. Sarolta asked no questions;
she cared not a jot for such matters.

The girls had scarce been three weeks together, when a
telegram summoned Sarolta back to Frankheim. It
was brief enough:

*'ZUruck kommen — Lothnar."

THE COMPOSER 169

She had spent the days of her Kur in a kind of
apathy which had been of itself a repose. The milk
she drank, the long dreamless sleeps which had replaced
her broken nights, and the idleness of her waking hours,
had done wonders for her appearance and health. But
upon receipt of Lothnar's telegram she became as one
who has received a new soul: all her listlessness fell from
her. She danced into Sady 's room with her news, and, at
the latter 's open dismay, alternately coaxed and stormed*
In fact — just for that hurried day of packing and travel-
ling — Sady found again the impetuous, lovable comrade
she thought to have lost forever.

The American sat watching her friend from the opposite
seat of the railway-carriage, yearning in almost motherly
fashion over her joyful agitation.

"What will be the end of it?" wondered she. "It's
more than Schwdrmerei — it's obsession! She's got that
telegram hidden away over her heart, I know — and oh!
how pretty she is, and how little able to take care of
herself!"

At the station they were met by Friedhelm Reinhardt,
beaming as usual kindness and friendship. Sady, who
was going on to Paris by the night-express, was delighted
to hand over Sarolta to such a safe keeping, and still
more pleased when she heard that the Viking had ap-
peared to fetch the girl back to his own home.

"You telegraphed to Frau Hegemann to have your
room ready," he said. "Now, I have a little piece of
news for you. It is not to the Hegemannsche Haus
that you are going, FrSulein Sarolta, it is to ours ! (Even

«

170 THE COMPOSER

now das Frauchen is nailing up muslin curtains to your
bed.) Na — that is the Master's wish."

Sarolta's eyes danced. To be near the Altschloss;
to be within sound of the horn when it should blow for
Friedhelm; within sight of the gilded vanes — what a
vision of bliss! Not to speak of pine-forest and torrent
to look upon, instead of a mean and dowdy street!
That is too lovely!" she cried in enthusiasm.
Jay nicht wahrf^* said Friedhelm. "And the little
wife will make you comfortable, never fear ! "

He chivalrously disguised the fact that the plan had
been not altogether welcome to such a cosey and loving
couple as they were. As for the girl, the news brought
the finishing touch of glamour to a golden day: Lothnar
had thought of her; Lothnar had planned this for her!

"I feel as if my feet could sing for joy to touch Frank-
heim soil again," she whispered fervently to Sady, when
they parted.

"Good-bye, honey," said Sady, her eyes filling with
tears. She watched the light figure go trippingly
by the giant's side all the length of the station, while
those tears slowly overflowed. She was past caring now
that Sarolta should care so little: it was her friend's
high spirits that filled her with unknown foreboding.

As she got back into the railway carriage to the side
of the impassive and cow-like Th^rese of Normandy,
a vague thought began to take shape in her mind:

"It will end by my coming here for good, to look after
her. . . . Meanwhile, I am glad she b with Frau
Bertha."

THE COMPOSER 171

Aj9 the jingling droschke drove them slowly across the
town, toward the Gate Tower, Friedhelm explained to
Sarolta the reason of the sudden recall.

"The Master is going to revive *Hippolytus/ Of
course you have heard, f raulein, of that early opera of
his? Nay, I remember telling you myself how the failure
of it in Berlin nearly killed him. He has been going over
the score ever since the production of *Iphigenia.' And
now, I believe there is very little to alter after all. It
is a grand work, with I know not what of youth and in-
spiration in it that may come but once in a lifetime. It
has been the first-bom child to him, the best-loved of
his creations, and — na, f raulein, you know him; he has
had no rest in his heart to think of it as a failure. He
to faU, and in what his own genius proclaims as good!
But the times were not ripe then. . . . Now they
are — he can impose himself.'*

Sarolta listened intently. Her pulses were throbbing.
This was life again after the torpor of those long days

— they had seemed so short to Sady! Here she was
back in the centre of a mighty activity; nay, she was
actually part of it.

"And oh, Herr Reinhardt, he wants me!"

The man smiled down at her.

"We all want you," he said, in his pleasant way, "but

— yes, frUulein, though the Master does not care that
one should discuss his plans, it is after all no secret:
he thinks of you for his Phaedra."

"His Phaedra!" repeated Sarolta, clasping her hands,
as if holding something precious and dear.

172 _THE COMPOSER

Phasdra! Sarolta knew as little of her as once she
had known of Iphigenia, but she told herself that if it was
to be another rdle of sacrifice like that of Agamemnon's
daughter, how she would rejoice in it!

Frau Bertha received her with reserve, but thawed
perceptibly over the unaffected rapture the girl expressed
at sight of the little room, smelling of soap and turpentine,
perfect as a daisy in its simplicity, snowy with the freshest
muslin curtains it is possible to imagine — a contrast,
indeed to the gloomy meagreness of the Hegemannsche
chambers. When Frau Bertha should have gone, and
she was free to let in the trees and the torrent, Sarolta
felt that she would have no desire left.

Before she went down to supper, she heard with an
indescribable leap of the heart, the long wild call of the
horn across the darkening space, across the roar of the
waters, the chant of the pines.

*'I am too happy!" she said to herself.

But she found Frau Bertha, not unnaturally ross at
a summons which robbed her of her Friedhelm's company
at such a moment. Something he had said to her before
he departed had likewise ruffled her. *^That girl up-
stairs, she has grown charmmgly pretty, has she not?
Rdzend hubschl"

Sarolta was not destined to meet Lothnar for another
week. She received orders to learn, and rehearse with
Reinhardt, Phaedra's first scene with Hippolytus. It
began to dawn upon her that she was on probation, after
all. And at the conclusion of several rehearsals, she
could see that Beinhardt himself doubted whether the

THE COMPOSER 173

part were suited to her. Nay, it became clear that, in
spite of his encouraging words on the evening of her
arrival, he scarcely wished her success.

"It is a very hateful character, FrSulein Sarolta,"
he said to her one day. "I cannot conceive why the
master should think of you for it. It is no rdle for a
young girl like you. Ach! it would do you no harm to
rest on your Iphigenia for a little while; and that, you
know, will be repeated from time to time for many years."

Here, Sarolta, almost as much to her own surprise as
to his, biurst into tears, and he ventured no further word
on the subject. She had herself realized it was a hateful
character. The German adapter had brought into the
Greek tragedy a certain element of human responsibility
which robbed it of its antique simplicity, and the sense
of a divinely ordained doom. She could not feel herself
Fhsedra. The words and music, with their evil passion
and strength, could not be expressed by that pure voice of
hers, so as to sound in the least convincing, even in her
own ears.

''The Master has made a mistake," said Reinhardt
to his wife. ''Everything about the child is too innocent
for the part."

"It is, iiberJcaupt, no career for a well-brought-up young
woman," said Frau Bertha sententiously.

CHAPTER XV

At last the order came that Lothnar was expecting
them. Sarolta, as she and Bernhardt walked up together
to the dilapitated portals of the Altschloss, was sick with
apprehension.

'^^6er, Fr&ulein Sarolta • • • " the tenor expostu-
lated, feebly enough, at sight of her white face. Sarolta
knew that he wished her out of it, and the resentment
this knowledge caused in her was perhaps what saved
her from being altogether paralyzed by nervousness.

Lothnar was waiting for them with Webel. He showed
all that fierce impatience to get to the music which she
had learned to understand.

''Late, late!" was his sole greeting; and then, ere there
was a moment for excuse or expostulation, he exclaimed:
*^Nay you are panting. • • you have hurried. • •
a pretty preparation for singing!''

With his unalterable sweetness of temper, Beinhardt
merely smiled; he unbuttoned his frock-coat, then spread
the scores on the music-stand.

It was Hippolytus who opened proceedings, to Sarolta's
relief. But it seemed to her that never had Beinhardt's
voice sounded so lifeless. But with rapidly beating
heart, trembling as she stood, she waited for the
moment when Phsedra breaks in with her wild cry of

174

THE COMPOSER 175

passion. She knew she struck the first notes with unfalter-
ing attack; the spirit of defiance had sprung up out of
the very centre of her terror. As she sang, she felt anger
increase upon her. How monstrous it would be if Rein-
hardty from some supersentimental German notion,
were to spoil this vital chance for her. As if the artist
should not be above such pettiness! Had not Lothnar
himself said to her, ^' You must put your spirit where I
will?" What — she, Sarolta, to be out of his dearest
work? That was a thought unendurable.

Upon a ringing note, Lothnar, who had been sitting
with his hand shading his eyes, sprang to his feet, and
with one movement, cast the two music-desks on the
floor. Sarolta stared aghast; in the heat of the fighting
mood that had held her as she sang, she had felt elated,
confident; never had her voice sounded better to herself,
but upon her the Master's fury fell:

^'Does one sing Phaedra as if one was scolding? How
is it possible? Do you again not know the story? Have
you no wits in your head to understand the words? —
You love him, you are pleading for his love — a guilty
love, comprehend that — and you want to make him feel,
him ' . • • Hippolytus, the dedicate, Artemis's pure
hunter • • • Hippolytus the clean-souled, that your
love is greater than sin — sweeter than honour — a deeper
necessity than truth!"

"'With all respect, Master," said Reinhardt firmly,
"' that is what such a maiden as FrUulein Sarolta can never
imderstand."

'"So!" Lothnar turned with a long-drawn snarl, and it

176 THE COMPOSER

was the beloved tenor who now came under the searing
wrath of the blue eyes. "That is your opinion, is it?
And let me tell you that you^re just as bad to-day as she
is, you're singing Hippolytus as if he was Joseph — tvas?
Ach** cried the genius, flinging his arms aloft and shaking
them at the painted ceiling. "This is doom. • .
this is fate! My Hippolytus, the treasure of my soul
. . . thou, thou, to fail me! . . • Patience!
Patience!"

He cast himself in his chair, and ran his fingers through
his hair. But in a second he was up again, as if moved by
springs. And facing the two, who stood tongue-tied,
almost like chidden children:

"Is it possible," he burst forth again, "that you
cannot see, that you cannot feel! What! I plunge
you into the heart of a storm, and my thunder does not
peal into your soul, my lightning does not flash into your
vision! • • • You, girl, look at him! Look at him,
I say, not at me! ... Is he not tall? Is he not
strong and disdainful? Is he not a man to waste a
woman's heart within her for longing? Ach^ maiden,
maiden you may be, but it is of maidens that women are
made. Look at him ! I tell you that he is beautiful, if you
don't see it — all Friedhelm Reinhardt as he is! Forget
that he is Friedhelm Reinhardt, that you are FrEulein
• . . FrUulein, 00^1(70^/ YHiat matters it? BePhsedra!"

"ilJer, hesler Mdster, . . . " pleaded Reinhardt,
the scarlet rushing to his handsome face.

"Look at him!" shouted Lothnar again, bearing down
the interruption with a stamp of his foot.

THE COMPOSER 177

If the giant was scarlet, Sarolta had turned white to
the lips. She was bewildered; beyond words terrified.
Herr Webel sat like an unwound automaton, staring
straight at his score.

As suddenly as it had come upon him, Lothnar's pas-
sion here passed away.

'^Fick up the music-stands, Friedel," he said quite
gently. "FrSulein Sarolta, sit down for a little while;
it is best I should put Hippolytus through his part first.
Now, old Kerl, do it again, for me. AcK from that
grandeur — *0 Mother Earth . . . O Sun that
makest dean!' — Come, thou twin soul of mine, give
forth my fire.**

Friedhelm answered to this call as to a trumpet blast.
He sang and seemed to leap to the height of his art
with one superb spring. When he paused for Fhsedra's
answering cry, the girl half rose from her seat, not know-
ing what was expected of her. Lothnar gave her a swift
look, held her a moment swaying as it were on his own
doubt, and then, with a gesture, cast her back. He
turned to Friedhelm and held out his hands.

"Eh, Webel," he cried over his shoulder, "what do
you say to that?"

"A magnificence," said Webel, without moving.

The contrast between the man's manner and the
extravagance of his words brought a laugh to both Loth-
nar and his tenor that made a pleasant diversion in the
room.

"I'll have no more from thee to-day," said the Master,
and once again he wheeled round upon Sarolta. ^^Na^

178 THE COMPOSER

little Iphigenia. . • " At the genial sound of the
words she lifted her eyes» full of a sudden hope. ''Is
it so hard for you to change into a PhaMira? What if
I were to put you through it myself? A little rehearsal,
just you and I together . . . How would that go?"

She stood with parted lips, scarcely able to credit the
happy promise after the hopelessness and the sense of
failure. Friedhelm, disapproving as he was of the part
for her, could not refrain from smiling.

''She is undoubtedly becoming quite extraordinarily
pretty," he thought, once again, in his brotherly way.

"Come to-morrow then, child, soon after ten." Loth-
nar spoke in the same benevolent, unwontedly gentle
manner.

Sarolta took tone and look to her heart, as a memoiy
of never-to-be-forgotten sweetness. "He likes me. In
spite of all, he trusts me!" It seemed to her almost as
much bliss as she could ever want in life.

"And I?" asked Reinhardt jocosely. "Are you still
afraid I shall make an oratorio of it?"

"Bah!" said Lothnar, striking him on the shotdder.
**Bist jay mein Hippolytus. I believe thou wast playing
thy little trick upon me, lest I should take thee too much
as a matter of course."

"Never have I seen him in better cheer," said Fried-
helm to his companion, as they went light-heartedly
homeward through the golden woods. "And yet, at
the beginning — brrrr, Fr^ein Sarolta, it was squally
weather, was it not?"

THE COMPOSER 179

''And after all," said Sarolta, not without a point of
indignation in her voice, ''he does not think me so inca-
pable of learning the r6le.*^

Friedhelm looked down at her thoughtfully.
"To teach you himself. . ." he murmured. "Never
have I known him do that for any one. It is a great
honour.**

Yes, it is a great honour," said Sarolta softly.
And it is true," proceeded Reinhardt, after a pause,
never will he find again so pure a soprano, fraulein.
And it has gained in power. I noticed that to-day."

It was reserved for Frau Reinhardt to cast a damper on
the two singers' satisfaction.

"What," she exclaimed — "Frfiulein Sarolta to go
. • . alone. . • to the Schloss to-morrow! A
young lady under my care, to be alone in the company
of a gentleman! Dr. Lothnar is still a man in the
prime of life, and he a widower now! What will Frau
Hegemann say? What will all Frankheim think of me?"

Sarolta sat stiffly, holding her foaming coffee-cup.
Scarlet-cheeked and furious, she could not tell her hostess
to her face that hers was a horrid little mind; but this
was what she wanted to tell her.

"Ah, thou, my love," soothed Reinhardt unmoved,
"with thy court education thou wilt never understand
the simple ways of artists."

CHAPTER XVI

'^LooK at me/' said Lothnar.

He was sitting at one of the pianos, in the odd great
music-room, and Sarolta was standing beside him. The
two were alone. So had he said: ^'Look at me/' upon
that first afternoon at the Sdiloss when he had told her
the story of Iphigenia. The memory of that hour sud-
denly flooded her.

''I am Agamemnon, and thou art my child, my be-
loved." Was he going to tell her in similar fashion the
story of Phsedra? But that story she knew.

She looked at him as he bade her, there was a sudden
shrinking within her, a distaste, almost an anger. She
wanted, even more passionately than on that bygone
day, to be chosen again; but pride and instinct alike re-
volted from the r6le itself.

^^ *8 ist eine hassliche Geschickte** had Reinhardt said.
Then, as she gazed down into the Master's eyes, the sense
of rebellion died. He struck a chord, still fixing her.

"Can you sing now?" he asked, under his breath.

There was a faint smile dawning about the comers of
his eyes and lips. All at once she was afraid of bursting
into tears.

"I don't know," she stammered. She could not
imagine why she should feel so unutterably miserable.

180

THE COMPOSER 181

He got up with a quietness, unwonted to that creature
of leaping haste.

'* After all,'' he said, still in that singular low voice,
"we can talk a little first.'*

She had taken a step or two away from him as he
rose, and now stood in the curve of the grand piano. He
leant across to her, resting his arms upon the unlif ted
desk.

"What have they put into your head about Phaedra
over there? Das Frctuchen! With her there is nothing
good in love, outside a little ring. So ein Weibchenl
. . . But you — come now, have you not an artist's
soul? Can you not see that love is a sacred thing in
itself? Na — if you had been bom Phsedra in those
older, freer days — I will say those purer days — and
you had met an Hippolytus, a noble, free, clean being,
say such a one as our Reinhardt yonder. . • .'*

He broke off. His gaze devoured her, swept as if
through every crevice of her soul. Instinctively she flung
back her head, scarlet and unaccountably indignant.

"Reinhardt!" she echoed in a tone of resentment.

Lothnar's eyelids fluttered for a moment down over
those intolerable eyes, a twitching passed on his face.
To the girl, staring at him with she knew not what horror
of apprehension in her heart, it seemed as if beard and
hair were stirred as by invisible flames.

"So/ 68 geht nicht also! — Nothing there." He spoke
in self-communion. "I thought as much."

He straightened himself; twisted his fingers into his
beard, and stood looking at her. Slowly she felt as if

182 THE COMPOSER

the power of thought were ebbing from her. He came
round to her.

"So white," he went on, in the same manner. "How
could anything so white know Phsedra?"

He laid his hands on her shoulders. She did not know
if he spoke the words aloud or only to the spirit: **Sieh
mich an! And so, absolutely, Phsedra wilt thou be?
Yes — I will, too, that thou shouldst be Phaedra. Such a
young soul as thou art, yet my soul is young too. . .
eternal young! Ach^ do we not understand each other?*'

He bent and kissed her on the lips. She would have
fallen at his feet, had he not caught her in his arms. She
saw his face bent over hers, as through weaving mists,
and it seemed to her that the fire leaped and played.
She heard his voice as from a far distance. "What,
still white?"

As he spoke, her heart sprang into an ecstasy of reali-
zation. He steadied her; she clung to his arm with both
her hands, and buried her face in his coat sleeve.

When^ his hand came and turned that face gently but
relentlessly to the light, the blood was singing in her ears.

"Now, that b well. Now, so bums a rose in your
face, such a splendour-flower."

His grasp about her relaxed, and she stood alone. He
took a slow turn in the room, and came back to her; and
then round her ice-cold hands his were again clasped,
gripping tight.

"Have we not understood each other? Now you are
a child no longer. You are a woman and my singer.
See, I will kiss you twice again; once to seal the red on

THE COMPOSER 183

your lips that love may flower there for evermore. And
once for silence."

She held him back as he bent toward her» not from
any reasoned following of his words, but from a sense
that there was a joy too great for her endurance. He
made no effort to break down that frail barrier. His
voice caressed her with an intoxicating softness that she
had never heard in it till this day.

**WUtnot?"

^'No/' she panted, while in her heart she was clinging
to him, longing to be once again within those arms and
to hide her crimson cheeks against his breast,

*'I will be silent," she breathed, not knowing what
she said. "And I — I . . . "

His gaze mused upon her. All the power and strength
of the man surrounded her, held her, played with her.

"From the first, you have ever learned quickly," he
said. And then he added, still with the caress in his
voice: "What is postponed is not forgotten, and we
have still to sing."

To sing! Anything in the world would have been
easier to her. She wanted to cry most of all — to cry
and be comforted. She wanted assurances that she was
not dreaming, that this unbelievable thing was true —
wanted him to say again that his soul was young for her;
that she was his chosen; that they understood each other.
She wanted Mrith all the innocent ardour of her
trapped heart, to have those kisses of the Master that
she had just refused. But through the confusion of
her tangled emotions, through the pangs of a joy that

184 THE COMPOSER

was too acute not to be pain, one thing stood forth: he
had called her his Singer; and she knew that if — incom-
prehensible rapture! — she was to be all the rest, she was
to be this to him first — his Singer.

So she sang, faltering, brokenly, with now a failing
almost of sound, now, suddenly pulsing from her heart
to her lips, an outburst of joy, as realization recurred like
a wave.

He took her once through the score without a comment,
and then shut the piano.

"For to-day, enough.''

He sat on, contemplating the brown wood.

''Shall I go?" she asked at length.

He sprang up with his old abruptness.

**Yes. And to-morrow, come again."

There might have been twenty people in the room from
the everyday manner in which he helped her on with
her furs and walked to the door with her.

On the threshold, however, he paused.

" If I blow the horn twice, it will be for you, to-morrow,"
he said. "For you alone."

And, suddenly smiling, he laid his fingers on his lips,
and then on hers.

She understood as if he had spoken. "Words are not
needed between us," she told herself, as she went slowly
out into the leaf-strewn avenue.

Instead of going straight home, she dived into the
thick recesses of the wood. It was a mellow autumn day,
under a sky of that ethereal blue which holds a kind of
lovely melancholy unlike spring joy or summer's pride.

THE COMPOSER 185

All the glade was golden with dying and drifting beech-
leaves. A birch tree shone here and there, as if in its
secret depth the wood were breaking into flame.

"He loves me ... he loves me ... "
The girl sat on the root of a tree, repeating this to herself;
there was no room for another thought. But by and by
she began to realize and relive again every moment of
that hour which had opened upon her life with a radiance
as unexpected as it was overwhehmng.

Only a little while ago she had gone up that avenue
trembling in uncertainty, like a schoolgirl to her se-
cretly adored master, almost as the worshipper of old
may have gone to the shrine of the God — and she
had come away hence, had he not himself said it? — child
no longer, but woman-souled. Oh, if it was to be woman
to love so intensely that there was no death she would not
give herself up to for his smile, no fire she would not leap
through for his kiss, then it was true she was a woman.
. . . He had wanted to kiss her again, and yet again,
and she had, with a movement of shrinkmg, inco pre-
hensible to her now, drawn back from him. "Once, that
love might flower ..." Ah, that was not needed!
"Once, for. silence'* — that was not needed either!
But the kisses, they were needed; her soul was crying out
for the touch of his lips. Not that she failed to under-
stand — "We two, we understand each other.** He was
too noble, too great in his strength to press where she
shrank. And how could he not ask for silence? Once
again she saw him stand before her, smiling, while the
new mourning enveloped him.

186 THE COMPOSER

•

Suddenly she remembered Frau Bertha's shrill protest.
"Alone with him, and he but a month's widower!" **So
ein Weibachenl** How little indeed such a mind would
understand the sacredness of love, of love like hers and
the Master's, sprung from soul to soul, like a flame!

Sarolta was awake most of that night. For the first part
of it she studied the words of "Fhsedra" with an inten-
sity bom of the daj 's revelation, and took shame to her-
self for having nusread and found ugliness in what held,
after all, nothing but a great love and the sorrow of it.
How would it have been with her, if she had known
herself as she knew herself now — all Lothnar's — and
he had known it and contemned her?

It was Fhsedra's treachery at the end that was the
ugly part of the story, not her great love, sacred by its
very greatness. But then Fh^edra must have been mad!
Yes, Sarolta toldherself , Fhsedra was mad, and the vengeful
goddess alone was responsible for that betrayal in death.
Well might Fhsedra have gone mad? . • • How would it
be with Sarolta, were Lothnar, who had yet once loved
her, to love her no more? "That would be death," said
the girl aloud to the lonely silence of her little room.

According to her custom, the windows were ox)en to
the night, and the voice of the torrent roared in upon her.
Leaving her score, she leaned out into the darkness.
Her soul seemed to slip from the body and fly across the
hidden spaces to where a tiny light ever and anon gleamed
yellow between swa3ang tree shadows. So he, too, was
watching! No wonder she could not sleep! Was he think-
ing of her, as she of him? Dare she linger on such a hope?

THE COMPOSER 187

She told herself that she would never be unreasonable,
that she would understand, as no woman on earth would
understand, exactly her place m his life; his singer, part
of his work. Yet for that very reason more of a helpmate
than any other woman could ever be. "The voice of
his inspiration," he had called Reinhardt. To be that
to Lothnar, only more intimately, as wife is closer than
friend — what a vision it was that spread before her, pal-
pitating with a glory so dazzling that she could scarce
look upon it!

Much to Frau Bertha's scandal the next morning
Sarolta explained that the two blasts of the horn, w hich
resounded toward the eleventh hoiu*, were for herself and
not for Reinhardt. The little woman flung up both hands
as the wooden house shook to the slamming of its outer
door on the girl's hurried exit.

"I tell thee, Friedel," she cried, **that is becoming a
bold thing."

The tenor looked at her with his large indulgence.

"Nay, my heart, it is the artist's ways that are foreign
to your nature."

"To such ways," said the wife fiercely, "I will never
accustom myself. Do not ask it of me."

"I do not ask it of thee," he said, and kissed her fore-
head between the curling pins which still restrained her
two front locks.

Frau Bertha need not have entertained any apprehen-
sions as to the propriety of her guest's visit to the Alt-
schloss this day.

From the threshold of the music-room Sarolta saw

188 THE COMPOSER

Webel at the piano. She halted mvoluntarily with a
sinking of her heart She had come to Lothnar, running
the length of the road and avenue, with no thought but
that she was the loved one coming to the beloved, troth
plighted by yesterday's hour — unimaginable hour!

She entered the room slowly, as if all her ardour and
joy had been turned to a leaden dullness. Was it possible
that he had not desired to see her alone, were it but
for one moment — for the space of one of those kisses
to set her soul singing for all the long day to follow?
How were her lips to sing if her soul did not? Then she
felt his eye upon her, and the scarlet rushed into her face.
It seemed to her as if by that glance he had caught her to
him. With it light broke upon her perplexity.

How foolish her doubts! Had he not to think of her,
of her good name as well as of his own, since the world
must not know of their understanding across a fresh-made
grave?

But all he said to her was the old reproach:

** You have come too quickly . . . you are pant-
ing. We will wait. Webel, just run through this passage
for me. I have thought of a change of measure here."

Under Webel's fingers the stormy accompaniment
to Phsedra's first song broke into the room, much,
thought Sarolta, as the noise of the torrent would break
into the wooden house on the opening of her window.
She began to lose herself in the pulsing interest which
the next ten minutes held. Between the composer and
his interpreter she could hear a masterpiece in the mak-
ing: Lothnar's very brain at work!

THE COMPOSER [189

He called her up at last; and she sang. He stood at the
back of her all the while, yet never had she felt his pres-
ence more intensely.

"Well, what do you think of it, AUeVy' came his voice
in the pause that succeeded the last falling note.

"It goes," said the imperturbable conductor.

"It goes better," amended Lothnar; "to-morrow it
will go better still."

On that she was dismissed.

In spite of philosophy and common-sense, in spite of
the satisfaction of his approval, she went home in a tur-
moil of misery. Between to-day and yesterday — what a
gulf! He had not even touched her hand. She went
straight up into her own room and flung herself on the
bed; but she could not cry. There seemed to be an angry
fire within her that scorched all tenderness.

Presently the reaction came; once again she chided
herself for the folly, for the want of trust . . . she
was showing herself unworthy of him! She called back
every word he had spoken the day before, and balm crept
into her soul. And was there not to-morrow?

But, on the morrow, when she drew near the music-
room, there came a kind of faintness upon her. Well
could Phsedra's languid moan befit her present mood!
As ^e stood, lacking the power to knock, the door was
flung open, and Lothnar stood before her. With one
glance she saw that the room was empty; her heart gave
a great leap.

He took both her hands and drew her in, shut the door

190 THE COMPOSER

behind her with his shoulder, and remained looking at
her, still holding her hands. His luminous extraordi-
naiy eyes went over her, and again she had that sensation
as if the look was an actual caress.

**Immer so blasar* he said. His voice once again
had the low note that bewitched her ear. ''Still so
pale!''

And as she hung on his gaze, feeling as if it held her
soul, he went on, after that manner of his, speaking more
to himself than to her:

'*Macht nichts — macht nichts. Between this white-
ness and that there lies the red. Fire and fire and glow
between: Iphigenia's and Phcedra's, both white, though
never the same. Understand that, thou little one: over
the red there is no leaping back."

He released her hands; then, from a basket of flowers
on the table, with much deliberation, he separated a
crimson carnation and gave it to her.

"Fools will beflower me," he said, smiling. "But
to-day there is some use in it. Place the red of it there
in thy breast. So. And, with thy little white face above
it, thou wilt be to-day such a Phsedra as has sprung
out of my heart."

He rang the bell and Webel came in.

When she had sung Lothnar did not speak; but he
looked at Webel, and that sapient man of music nodded
his bearded head.

"To-morrow," said the Master then, "we can have our
Hippolytus back."

THE COMPOSER 191

"With pennission/* insinuated Webel, "since next
Thursday the theatre reopens with Trometheus' "

"Tscha! Trometheus'!" interrupted the Master im-
patiently.

Webel made no reply but adjusted his spectacles and
turned his round gaze back to the score.

Lothnar stood, a frown of vexation on his counte-
nance. Sarolta could feel in her own soul the
frenzy of his impatience to go on with the work in hand.
With unexpected reasonableness, however, he suddenly
gave in:

**nast recht — Trometheus* is after all, also son of
mine.. But forget not — ah, let none of you forget!"
his inspired gaze lightened — "that *Hippolytus' is my
beloved ! Of all my children * Hippolytus* is my darling ! "
Then he laughed, "No favourites with that one" he said,
jerking his thumb toward the quiet, ponderous figure.
"Oh, thou old automaton! Well, Saturday be it then.
Phaedra and Hippolytus together here. Understood?"

He broke into laughter, incomprehensible to the girl,
rubbed his hands together, and then ran them through
his beard.

"It goes — it goes!" he cried, with the glee of a child.

That laughter haunted Sarolta. She hardly knew if
it was happiness or misery that she carried away with her
to-day. He had said once more wonderful and unfor-
gettable things; he had made her feel more than ever
that she was his, that she was even as he wished her to
be — "such a Phaedra as has sprung from my heart!"
Could Lothnar's lips utter words of deeper content in

192 THE COMPOSER

her? And the flower! Every breath of its deep fragrance
was sweet as a kiss. Yet he had not kissed her! Yet
he had dismissed her till Saturday, without a hint of
regret — and this was Tuesday!

Suddenly she felt horribly alone. There was no one to
whom she could speak, to whom tell her fantastic story,
by whom be envied and congratulated, be scolded and
reassured! If Sady were only by her side!

Upon this impulse she opened her desk and began
feverishly to write. But, even as pen touched paper,
an indescribable repugnance to set forth her secret came
upon her. It was not only the memory of how he had
trusted her to silence, it was an unreasoned instinct in
herself. So she wrote barely three lines :

Sady, I don't know if I am the happiest or most unhappy

of creatures!

Your

Sabolta.

When the letter was posted she told herself that Sady
would think her mad.

CHAPTER XVII

"I HEARD the winding of the horn for you this morning,"
said Sarolta, abruptly greeting the tenor, when they met
at the midday-meal the next day.

''Yes, Fr^ulein Sarolta. I went, and, as I was telling
the wife, I bring back news. The Master has gone —
to Berlin!"

Sarolta bent her head over the sorrel and parsley soup
to hide her face. She knew she must be pale because
she felt so cold. Gone, without a word!

**Achy ja. The E^ser has summoned him." Fried-
helm paused impressively. Then he plunged at his soup
again. ''Yes, it is so; all honours come together. And
now, little wife, I will continue. It seems His Majesty
has a wish that 'Iphigenia' should be given in Berlin
early in the year, for the royal visits."

**Achy Friedel!" Frau Bertha exclaimed. This was
indeed news; the colour deepened on her plim3:p
cheeks.

"Yes, Bertha," said her husband, genially answering
the wistful glance: "Thou shalt accompany us. Who
should be there if not thou? A box shalt thou have, to
invite thy relations into. And pretty thou shalt make
thyself. An occasion for new frocks, if ever there was
one! What? Leberwurst to-day! Pracktvolir*

19S

194 THE COMPOSER

He paused to help himself from the savoury dish —
your master of the house is served first in Germany.

"'And so Dr. Lothnar is gone?''

Sarolta's voice sounded strange to her own ears, and
she felt her hostess's eyes bent upon her with that un-
friendly scrutiny which had come into them of late.
Friedhelm began to laugh.

" I found him — just think — ready to indite a telegram
of refusal ! AcK you should have seen him ! *!,' he growled,
*to come at their beck and call! ... I, to ofiFer
them another of my soul's children to stone!' My blood
ran cold, I assure thee> Herzchen, I saw him on the point
of committing the mistake of his life. *Well,' I said,
'refuse — refuse if you will. The Berliners will say you're
afraid.' ^Afraid, I?'" Again laughter shook the giant
at the reminiscence. "The very hair on his head rose
— he faced me like a lion incensed. Then of a sudden he
cried: T will go! I will tell the Emperor: "Iphigenia"
I will not give in Berlin, but if you want work of mine,
"Hippolytus" you shall have. "Hippolytus!"' he roared
at me — *"Hippolytus," that was hissed and mocked and
damned — ten years ago. He can take it or leave it, but —
but — ! ' there came into his eyes that light — you know,
fraulein." Instinctively, the artist had turned to the
fellow-artist. "*Take it he will,' he said then; *I will
triumph where I was rejected.' And so to Berlin he has
gone; and those two great ones will meet to-morrow!"

Frau Bertha's under lip trembled like that of a dis-
appointed child.

"Such an attitude to the Emperor! EGs Majesty will

THE COMPOSER 195

■

never tolerate such independence. Ach was! It will
come to nothing but shame for him, and that will be the
end of it."

"The shame will not be for Dr. Lothnar!" cried
Sarolta, and drew upon herself again the gaze of repro-
bation, doubt and dislike.

"Do not excite yourself, fraulein," said the lady, in
tones which reminded the girl of Frau Hegemann.

The peace-loving tenor interrupted:

"My beloved, that Leherwurst — it had a thought too
much pepper."

**Achy Friedel — is it possible — too much! Rosa,
perhaps, while my back was turned "

"Nevertheless, I will have some more."
^ "Will Dr. Lothnar be back for the 'Prometheus'?"
asked Sarolta after a long silence.

"Not probable, fr^ulein, unless he fails to arrange
things in Berlin — and that's not likely, my Bertha, I
assure you; he will have many preparations to make.
Our Webel will conduct on Thursday. The wife and you
must have good seats — I will see to that."

The Thursday of the "Prometheus" was a day of storm
and wind, and Reinhardt returned from a long morning
at the theatre, wet through. He was in high spirits,
scoflFed at his wife's remonstrance, ate an enormous meal
to last him till his late supper, and fell heavily asleep in
his armchair over a cigar.

"Friedhelm is flushed," said Frau Bertha to Sarolta.

The two sat together in the overheated salon; the

196 THE COMPOSER

rain was streaming against the panes, and even the air-
loving Sarolta could not venture out. She had promised,
moreover, to help her hostess with the mepding of
Prometheus's tunic, which was unexpectedly discovered
to be torn.

"What weather!" proceeded the wife. "What a
career! And my Friedhelm excites himself so much over
his work."

A long snore penetrated through the half -opened door
of the dining-room. For the fourth time Frau Reinhardt
left her sewing to creep across the painted boards and
look in upon her sleeping lord.

"He is certainly flushed" — she repeated when she
returned.

"How she fusses!" thought Sarolta wearily. "How
could an artist hamper himself with such a wife?" Her
own thoughts were far away, wondering how it went
with him yonder in Berlin — and if he thought of her;
wondering why he had not sent her a line, a word. Was
she so little to him, after all? Was he so much afraid of
gossip? She remembered Friedhelm's mimicry: *I —
afraid?' remembered that Lothnar had gone to oppose
the most powerful will in the land. No, it was not that.
What then? He had faith in her faith. . . . "We
understand each other," he had said. Yes, that was it.
She must never let him guess these doubts, this weakness.

Suddenly she found that her companion was waiting
for an answer to some question.

"I beg your pardon," she stammered, dazedly looking
up from her mechanical stitching.

THE COMPOSER 197

"AbeTy FrSulein Sarolta," cried the other acidly, "any
one so absent-minded these last days I have never seen.
I cannot conceive what has come over you!" The
mollifying influence of Sarolta's usefulness gave way
before a return of sharp suspicion. "Three times I have
asked your opinion. Have you noticed which my
Friedhelm seems to prefer as a bei-essen — the raw ham
or the apple and herring salad? I have prepared a
Hamburg steak for his supper, and to that I must have
a Schmeck Stuck. My Friedel returns ever so tired and
so hungry!"

But though there was herring salad and Hamburg
steak for supper that night, Prometheus was imable
to do justice to either. He was heavy and unlike him-
self, thought Sarolta, though unalterably good-tempered.
Finally, in answer to his wife's questions, delivered with
almost irate anxiety, he confessed that he had a headache.

"Thou didst catch a chill this morning. ... I
knew it!" she cried tragically. "Thou wast naturally
perspiring at rehearsal, and didst come forth into the wet.
Achy did I not bid thee take thy rain-coat? "

"It was not raining when I left. It was not that.
But to-night, nay, it is true, on the stage I was cold.
They left some windows open — and thou knowest it is
a heavy part."

Frau Bertha, in what Sarolta could not help thinking
irritating and disproportionate solicitude, urged a cold
packing, at which Friedhelm shivered; then a steam bath,
upon which he vowed he was burning hot, and in proof

198 THE COMPOSER

of it extended his hand. The wife had a fresh explo-
sion as she felt it. She seemed unaccountably angry,
Sarolta thought.

"Fever — thou hast fever!" she exclaimed accusingly.

He laughed at her, heartily enough to disarm such
suspicions.

"I only want bed, my little wife."

He consented, however, to camomile tea.

In the dawn Sarolta was awakened by her hostess's
appearance at her bedside.

"FrSulein Sarolta, rouse yourself, for God's sake!"
Through webs of tangled dreams the girl stared, not
sure if this were not also a dream. "My Friedhelm is so
ill — oh, so ill! I must have the doctor. Yet I cannot
leave him. I do not know which way to turn — Rosa
is so stupid."

Sarolta sat up. This was no dream. The plump,
bustling, self-satisfied Bertha was trembling, and seemed
quite unaware of the tears that were coursing down her
cheeks.

"I will goi ' cried the girl promptly. "Don't be
frightened — of course it's only influenza."

*McA, he is so ill!" moaned Bertha. It was the poor
woman's very composure as she explained the address
and the shortest road to the doctor that most impressed
upon her listener the urgency of the moment. But, as
soon as she felt herself understood, she broke down again.

**Achi if we had not been exiled here!" she sobbed.
"No telephone . . . such a distance! ... If
I lose my Friedel "

THE COMPOSES 199

She rushed away upon these words.

"If I lose my Friedel!*' The thought pursued Sarolta
as she dressed with a haste that almost defeated its own
end. Surely it was not possible that such a catastrophe
could threaten! Only yesterday he had entered upon
them in splendour of health; had laughed and eaten and
slept with all his Viking zest. It was nonsense, of course
— only Frau Bertha's inborn f ussiness.

Yet as Sarolta ran down the creaking wooden stairs
and out into the misty garden, where daylight was still
but a lividness on the face of night, a sense of immense
tragedy had already taken possession of her soul.

Although every medical authority of note in Frank-
heim assembled in the wooden house by degrees that day,
to fight for Friedhelm Reinhardt's life, from the very
beginning it was a losing battle.

To mind the little Ulrich in the attic nursery, while a
distracted Rosa ran between kitchen and sick-room,
was all that Sarolta could do. With the artist's horror
of pain and painful emotions, she was glad enough not
to be wanted below. She sat the long hours through,
listening to the hurried feet that went in and out, to and
fro, on stairs and passages; to the sound of the motors
that crunched upon the road. And ever and anon the
cry of a voice, dreadfully hoarse, would reach her and set
her shuddering. The tenor was delirious, and now would
sing, in unrecognizable notes, some stave that had flowed
in such golden purity from his lips only a few hours ago;
now, declaring that the horn was calling him, would strive

200 THE COMPOSER

to rise from his bed in such fever strength that it was as
much as Webel and the doctors could do to hold him down.

The little Ulrich, not yet two years old, was a heavy,
healthy child, to whom Sarolta had never felt herself
in the least drawn. His contented stolidity, however,
made her task very easy. He would sit on her lap or
play with his toys, as she wished. She had nothing to
distract her mind from its anxiety. And all the while
her heart was sick within her. She had not realized
before how much Friedhelm, great artist and simple,
kindly hearted man, had become endeared to her!
Never had she had from him anything but pleasant
looks and words and helpful deeds. It came upon her
now that life without his genial presence would be a cold
place; yes, even to her who carried such fire in her heart.

"He would always have been my friend,** she told
herself forlornly, "always . . . whatever hap-
pened — '' and then caught herself up on that last
thought with a stab of pain. What could happen? Even
if she lost her friend, was she not safe — she that had
such a lover, such a betrothed?

And all through the long day she kept listening for one
step on the stairs. Not a motor, not a droschke drew
up to the garden gate that did not bring her to the win-
dow with a leaping hope. • . • Of course they had sent
for him! Surely he would soon be here! And into her
own selfish longing there grew a new terror — Friedhelm
would die unless Lothnar were here soon! Unreasoned
as the thought was, it obsessed her; she was certain of it —
the presence of Lothnar alone could save his friend.

THE COMPOSER 201

Lothnar's strength only would have the power to wrest
him from Death.

When Ulrichchen had docilely taken his supper and
as docilely laid himself to sleep in the little white cot,
Sarolta crept down the stairs. The house had grown
very still; the carriage and the two cars had gone away,
and she knew that Webel also had left, for she had heard
his voice iuvthe garden. She was driven by the desire
to ask when the Master might be expected; but she did
not dare knock at that closed door, and so she sat on the
lowest step of the staircase waiting. She wished that
it were not all so silent; she could hear the distant voice
of the torrent — so silent it was! Presently a bell rang
shrilly from the sick-room, and with unusual promptitude
Rosa pounded up the stairs, carrying a large block of
ice in a basin. Frau Bertha came out as the heavy foot-
steps reached the landing. Impulsively Sarolta sprang
forward; but the question died half -spoken on her lips
as the other turned her face toward her. It was swollen
and glazed with tears beyond recognition. But Frau
Bertha was not crying now; she looked at Sarolta with
a dreadful blank stare, snatched the ice from Rosa, and
went back into the room.

Before the door was closed again, Sarolta caught a
glimpse of the doctor she had herself fetched that morning;
he was sitting at the foot of the bed, with his hands folded.

Heavily she went back to the attic, carrying the omen
of that motionless figure in her heart: he was sitting
with his hands folded — he could do no more. And
Reinhardt lay so still.

202 THE COMPOSER

She made no attempt to go to bed, but sat in the
nursery armchair^ feeding the stove from time to time,
that its company might not fail her.

About midnight there was once again a stir echoing
through the wooden house. It was no advent from
without — the commotion came from within. Once she
heard the doctor's voice crying an order on the landing.
The running of feet and the opening and closing of doors
went on for a little while, and then the silence fell again.
Then, just as Sarolta's palpitating heart was set-
tling into some kind of quietness, Rosa's tired slouching
tread resounded on the creaking stairs, stumbling with
haste.

^'FrUulein, frilulein!'' she gasped, bursting into the
nursery, "the herr is dying, and the mistress says'* —
she struggled for breath — "the mistress says you are to
bring the little one — at once — at once!"

Sarolta heard the girl sob aloud, as she tramped down
the stairs again.

At once! At once! There was no time for her to
pause upon the terror and the sorrow of it; to listen to
the shrinking coward instinct that would bid her fly
and hide. She caught the sleeping child from his bed,
wrapped him in the eiderdown, and, staggering under
his weight, carried him out of the room. As the light
of the landing struck upon his face, he opened his eyes
and pulled a lip of distress; but he was a good child, and
the cry was no more than a whimper. It brought Frau
Bertha out upon them instantly. Much as she had
snatched the basin from Rosa's hand she now snatched

THE COMPOSER 203

her child. Not knowing what else to do, Saxolta followed
her into the room.

She need not have dreaded the sight of the sick man.
Reinhardt lay all his great length in a wonderful placidity.
His bearded head was low on the pillows, and in the
shaded light there seemed little change about his grand
features. Only one hand outstretched upon the coverlet
was touched with the lamp rays, and Sarolta saw that
it was already the colour of death, and that it was never
a moment still, but plucked and plucked as if at invisible
blades of grass. And the doctor sat where he had sat
before — with his hands folded.

She stood just inside the door; she heard the child's
whimper, louder raised, and Reinhardt 's voice — his
own voice once more, only very far away.

"The poor little one! . . . Lay him close that I
may kiss him, Bertha."

Frau Bertha moved in a tense silence.

"Is that Sarolta?" — the far-away voice spoke again.

Sarolta came to the bedside; but he did not seem to
know that she was close to him, and spoke straight
before him.

"-4cA, Sarolta, toie schcm haben wir zusarrvmen gesungen
— I shall never sing Hippolytus now."

The wife turned with a fierce movement from the
farther bed in which she had just laid the child. She fell
on her knees, and caught the plucking hand.

"-4cA, Friedhelm, Friedhelm . . . hast thou noth-
ing to say to me — to me, thy wife?"

With all his failing senses he tried to respond to that

204 THE COMPOSER

cry. The light of the deep, undeviating love of his whole
manhood shone upon his face. He made an effort to turn
in the bed toward her.

"Mein armes, gutes Weibchenr'

The words were more breathed than spoken, and then
that very breath seemed to stop. Sarolta caught her
own to listen; she saw the doctor half rise from his chair,
and then fall back with a single gestiure of helplessness.

A low moan from Frau Bertha intensified the awful
waiting. Then, all at once, the giant figure raised itself
sitting in the bed. Staring with widely opened eyes
at that point of the room where Sarolta had first stood
when she entered, the dying man flung out his hand
toward it.

"Sarolta," he cried in a loud, warning voice, ^^hiUe
Dich. . . . have a care!"

The doctor sprang forward, but it was Frau Bertha
who caught her husband in her arms as he fell back.
But even as she did so, she flung one look at Sarolta —
a look of hatred. It was across a dead man.

"God's will!" said the doctor. His voice broke; he
had been Friedhelm's close friend.

Sarolta fell on her knees, and hid her face against the
chair nearest to her. She had seen death before; but
not like this. The good Uncle Mosenthal had slipped
away as a child may fall into sleep, and none could have
told the moment of the passage. But to die with words
of delirium on his lips, in that sudden leap of strength —
it seemed unnatural, cruel, terrible, like a death by
violence! Her soul was filled with a sick terror: why

THE COMPOSER 205

should he have called to her? and why had Frau Bertha
that look in her eyes?

She knew of no sin in her own heart, and yet had a
sense of guilt. She could not reason; she could not pray

— scarcely think; only a black dread was upon her.
She heard Frau Bertha's voice, quite calm:

"BiUe, lieber Freundy it is only my hand that must
touch him. I will close his eyes/*

Sarolta shuddered. Reinhardt's eyes that had always
looked so joyously and kindly upon life!

Steps upon the stairs without! — Steps and a voice
she knew.

"The Master is here!" said Webel, entering; a thrill
of hopeful excitement in his usually level tones.

''It is too later*

Sarolta never knew if any one had really said the words
aloud, or if it were only the utterance of her own grief;
but she knew that the conductor's voice trailed oflF with a
groan, and that, as he stood blocking the doorway, some
one thrust him aside.

Then, while the great silence of Death held them all,
Lothnar's presence filled the room.

The girl had no thought now but for him. She saw
him stand, his rough travel cloak flung open, his rugged
face set as if granite-hewn; only his eyes moved from

Reinhardt's still face to the faces of those about the bed

J

— the widow's, the doctor's, her own. In spirit she flung
out her arms to him with an impulse of tenderness that
had never yet come over her love; but his glance swept
over her as if he knew her not and fixed itself again

206 THE COMPOSER

on the dead man. Then he brushed his forehead as one
who would sweep away a foolish dream. He took a step
forward:

"Friedel!"

The name fell with infinite gentleness. Frau Bertha
suddenly sobbed.

"-4cA, verehrter Freund ..." began the doctor
hoarsely. But both fell silent. Lothnar was blind and
deaf to all but one thing.

"Friedel," he called again, this time with a voice that
shook the room. It had an awful ring of anger in its
pain. The child woke and cried loudly; and Frau Bertha
caught it up» her loosened tears falling like rain.

Lothnar took one of those livid hands that still lay as
the last gesture had outflung them. Held by the horrible
spelly the others saw him clutch and press. A moment
he stood as if unable to believe that no answering pressure
was to come. Then his frenzied fingers closed round the
dead man's wrist.

"What is this?" His foice was so hoarse that it
sounded like something torn.

Frau Bertha, hushing the child against her breast,
answered:

"He is dead;* leave him in peace!"

"Dead! That is a lie — idiots and fools you all are!
Dead? You don't understand. How can he be dead?
Friedel, thou art not dead "

Lothnar dragged down the bedclothes that lay across
the tenor's mighty chest; then have a loud and dreadful
cry of laughing triumph: "He is warm, I tell you. No,

THE COMPOSER 207

no, friend of mine, thy heart could not turn cold so easily.
What are you all about? You, doctor — you, wife —
bring me brandy; I will make him drink. See, I lift him
up in my arms. He is smiling. Did I not tell you so —
Friedel . . . my own breath I will pour into thy
lungs. Cannot a sick man faint? • • • Brandy,
you fools!"

The torn voice rose and fell in agonized cadence.
Even while with one hand Lothnar passionately gestured
for the restorative, with the other he clasped the inert
weight against his breast. Then his head was bent,
seeking the lips silent for evermore.

With an ejaculation: "This must not be!" Dr.
Baumann rushed forward. But Webel arrested him:

*'AiL8toben lassenl Let him storm himself out . . . !"
said he. He was quite unconscious of the tears that
were rolling down into his beard.

No sooner had his mouth touched that of the dead man
than Lothnar relinquished his grasp and fell on his knees
as if stricken; his face presi^d into the bedclothes, his
hands clasped above his head.

Frau Bertha had checked her sobs. She laid her child
back upon her bed and with deliberate movements re-
arranged her husband's head on the pillow, smoothed the
disordered clothes about him, folded the stiffening arms;
next she drew the sheet over his face. Upon that face
an unearthly serenity was settling ever more deeply —
majestic rebuke of eternity to the futile human passion
that raged about its rest.

She remained a moment wrapped in a fierce composure.

208 THE COMPOSER

looking down at the convulsed figure on the other side
of the bed.

**Take shame» Herr Lothnar/' she said suddenly, with
anger, "to disturb the peace of the dead!" The tears
rushed back upon her: "Do I not lose my all?" she
sobbed, "yet do you see me rail against the will of the
Ahnighty?"

Every conventional instinct, every inherited tradition
of the God-fearing simple burgher class from which she
had sprung, had risen outraged within her, and rang in
her voice.

Lothnar arose from his kneeling posture and stood
glaring at her wordless. Then his gaze fell upon the
sheeted outline. He staggered and the doctor caught
him by the elbow. But, like some wounded wild beast,
the touch stung him into strength of fury a^ain.

"io«/" he thundered; steadied himself and breathed
heavily through his nostrils. A torrent of words broke
from him. It was Friedhelm's widow he denounced,
and, behind her. Fate that had blundered:

"Your all! — you smug little kitchen wife! What do
you know of it? What was he to you? A man to cook
for, to cosset and plague and give squalling children to!
Any one else, any coxcomb of a lieutenant, would have
served you as well • . . will serve you as well —
miserable creature who could not even keep life in his
splendid frame! Impotent fools that you are! Had
I been here, do you think I would have let him
go. . . . You are resigned to the will of the
Almighty! It comes easy to you! I — I — I!" — he .

THE COMPOSER 209

struck forehead and breast alternately with frantic ges-
ture, "I will have none of the God who mars his own
handiwork. What am I without him? He is mine; he
is necessary to me. My friend, the brother of my soul —
more than that, the instrument of my art! Er ist mir
notigy versteht ihr mich allef**

His eyes with their mad fire ran once more from face
to face, to fall back on the shrouded figure. ^*I cannot
get on without him. He is my Hippolytus!" His voice
rang piteously of a sudden. "It is not true,*' he cried,
and seemed like a man breaking from a trance or a
delirium. "Did any one say that Hippolytus was dead! "
He plucked at the sheet with an uncertain touch, and,
as if the strength to lift it had failed him, fell against
the bed and from that to the floor.

"This is best," said the doctor, wiping his forehead.

Sarolta, trembling in every limb, stood now holding
on to the chair, as Webel and the doctor carried the un-
conscious man out of the room. What seemed a long
while passed in the awful silence left behind. All at
once, Frau Bertha turned like a tigress: "If you please,
frUulein, you will leave me alone with my dead.'* The
girl started from her miserable trance and mechanically
held out her arms for the child.

**AcK neinl" cried the other. "I keep my little one.
Am I to have nothing left to me?"

To the sound of the widow's loud sobbing Sarolta
dragged herself from the room which had held such unim-
aginable calamity that night. By the open door of her
. own attic she remained listening, breathless; ever and

210 THE COMPOSER

anon creeping to the head of the little stairs to hearken
for what sounds could reach her from below. Once she
told herself desperately that she must go to him: he had
fallen as helpless as the dead man; what if he too were
dying! But an invincible physical reluctance held her.
Then suddenly she heard his voice in the hall — harsh,
impatient:

"Come then, Webel *'

The outer door was closed very softly by some one
from within and a slow step came up the stairs. It was
the doctor returning to the death-chamber.

She went back and flung herself exhaustedly, dressed
as she was, on her bed. But it was not to sleep.

Beneath and beyond the anguish and grief and terror
lay a pain sharper than all the rest — a question piercing
and not to be answered. Lothnar had looked upon her,
and had not seen her ! What was she, then, to him?

CHAPTER XVin

"Unbelievable catastrophe, I am heartbroken,"
telegraphed Madame Costanza to the widow.

Telegrams and wreaths of every description, messages
of regret and sympathy from all quarters of the musical
world, poured into the little wooden house. Almost the
whole of Frankheim, rich and poor, drove or tramped out
of the Ost Thor to the garden gate, with a tribute that
ranged from the many-streamered gold laurel wreath to
the bunch of wild autumn flowers tied with a black string.

The funeral itself was a pageant such as Frankheim
had rarely seen. The opera chorus sang a hynm roimd
the open grave under the beating finger of Webel. Not a
Musik Verein in the land but had sent its deputy. Yet
the great artist was not so much regretted as the good
fellow. It seemed that he had been an unobtrusive but
generous helper of struggling comrades, and kindly anec-
dotes about him flew from lip to lip. Many shops were
closed for the day; so was the theatre, indeflnitely.

"If it had been for a royal personage, it could not have
passed off differently," said the widow, proudly lifting
her cr^2^e- veiled head and looking round through swollen
eyelids at the group of sympathetic female friends who had
flocked to her house after the ceremony. "The Grand-

211

212 THE COMPOSER

Duke was represented, and even the Dowager Grand-
Duchess — Ach, she sent a wreath of immortelles!**

"We saw ity best Bertha, we saw it!" cried the friends
in chorus. ** Black and yellow immortelles^ reizendr*

''And that of the Berlin Conservatorium — ach^ that
was beyond words lovely — aUerliebstr*

Wreath after wreath was re-enumerated with much
ejaculation and clacking of tongues, and Frau Beinhardt
felt great comfort steal upon her soul.

Presently the heads drew closer together. One, only
one, had been conspicuous by his absence. The Herr
Doktor Lothnar had not stirred outside the Altschloss
since the night of his friend's death. None had seen
him but Webel and his servant. The Archduke had sent
his physician, who had been refused admittance. It
was rumoured that Webel was in deep anxiety.

A lady tapped her forehead significantly; another, not
to be outdone, vowed that she knew, on the best authority
— her Anna-Lise was a niece of Dr. Lothnar's own cook —
that the composer had not swallowed bit or sup since —

The widow had drawn herself up and compressed her
lips at the first mention of Lothnar's name. A deep
grudge she bore him now. Was it not his opera that
had killed her Friedhelm? Ah, and was not the deathbed
scene an unforgettable outrage? Yet that through grief
for the loss of her husband the world-renowned composer
should lose his wits was a tribute more startling than any
other to the dead man's memory. So, though she dark-
ened with dislike, she swelled with pride.

While friends thus administered comfort to the

THE COMPOSER 213

bereaved, Sarolta sat miserably alone in the little room
where she had been so tremblingly joyful.

Frau Bertha had scarcely spoken to her since their
parting on the night of death; but, whenever they had
met, the widow had shot dreadful glances at her —
glances charged with hatred, with accusation, and scorn.

"What have I done?" thought Sarolta, wearily. Not
that she cared very greatly; this was a minor trouble
indeed, compared with the tide that swept her souL
Grief for Friedhelm, anxiety for her own future, her dis-
mal isolation in this stricken house, everything was
swamped in the bitter waters of her own misery. The
longing for the smallest sign from Lothnar, combined
with a growing apprehension, possessed her utterly.

— " Have a care, Sarolta ! '* What had Friedhelm meant
by his warning? In the pain and horror of the moment,
she had failed to grasp its ominous significance. Now
the words recurred again and again with terrifying in-
sistance. What if it had been no delirium, but a vision
in death of some peril which threatened her? What peril?
She only knew of one that could aflEect her — the loss of
Lothnar's love. She could not contemplate that.

When the early twilight of this funeral day began to
fall, Frau Hegemann, who had a bat-like fondness for
the darker hours, made her appearance at the wooden
house; and, Frau Bertha's other company having departed
to their own hearths, she remained on in long conclave
with the widow.

The inner folds of the human heart shelter singular

814 THE COMPOSER

impulses; to none of her honest intimates did the mourner
give her confidence; it was to this harsh and gloomy
soul that she chose to lay bare the hidden wound; per-
haps because she had always felt that Frau Hegemaim
hated Sarolta.

"He called her thou . . . with his last breath —
he called her thou!"

"No man can be trusted with a wanton," said Frau
Hegemann, bitingly.

The widow broke into wrath. Her Friedhelm had
never been of such. God forgive her if she had suspected
him! Yet, what could his warning have meant? What
was it that she — his own true wife, had ignored?

"Seek not to know," advised the hag. "Have I not
learned the ways of artists?"

The other gave way to tortured sobbing.
My Friedhelm ! my Friedhelm ! ' '
Ach^ in Heaven's name, blame him not . • •
the girl being what she is! Did I not see from the first
moment in Paris? — How could you think she would
spare your husband, when Dr. Lothnar himself has not
escaped her?"

In some inexplicable way Frau Bertha found a kind
of consolation in the thought. It was true the creature
had had the boldness, the unheard-of effrontery, to go
alone day after day to the Altschloss, in spite of all one
could say to her — "and him not six weeks bereaved."

The two women caught at each other, each in her new
mourning. Then, trembling from head to foot, the widow
cried she would as soon keep a snake in the house.

THE COMPOSER 215

"I will take her back," said Frau Hegemann grimly.
" This very night."

Sarolta lifted a flushed face from her pillow and stared
at the gamit black figure that stood at the foot of her
bed like some cruel image of fate.

"Rise, Fraulein Vaneck, and pack."

The girl gazed uncomprehendingly.

"It is impossible that you should remain here," pro-
ceeded the rasping voice.

Sarolta sat up, her heart beating to sufiPocation.

"Why — who says so?" she stammered. Was this
Lothnar's order? And what could it portend?

"That is a question, frUulein, which you must answer
for yourself. Frau Reinhardt declines to keep you — that
should be enough. I am waiting to take you back to my
house this night."

"To-night?"

"Yes, to-night. Your packing need not detain you
for any undue length of time, I should imagine."

With this sneer at the girl's modest wardrobe, Frau
Hegemann withdrew.

It was next day that rumour ran like wildfire through
Frankheim with an extraordinary tale.

An early visitor had brought a wreath to Reinhardt's
resting-place in the little church-yard outside the town.
He had found that the flowers left in a monstrous mound
above the new-made grave had been thrust right and
left, and that, upon the earth thus laid bare, a fire had

216 THE COMPOSER

been kindled, which had burnt itself out. Upon close
inspection, he had discovered some fragments of charred,
but unconsumed, manuscript and print — obviously of
music, obviously, also, operatic. The young man — an
artist who had arrived in Frankheim too late for the
obsequies — hurried importantly to Webel carrying the
torn, half-burned pages with him.

For once the conductor was moved out of his
phlegm.

**Ach, GoU, du Allmdchtigerl** he cried, casting from
his eyes the spectacles through which he had been peering,
"The score of *ffippolytus'!"

There was little hair to tear upon that bald and dose-
cropped head; but he tore at it.

"Calamity! Calamity!" he groaned; and, forgetting
his spectacles on the floor, dashed from the room, leaving
his visitor open-mouthed, unable as yet to realize the full
significance of his own tidings.

Webel, who had scarcely slackened speed on the way,
halted now on the threshold of the music-room, trying to
pierce the darkness that reigned within. Every shutter
was drawn against the lovely October sunshine. Lothnar
had endured no light about him since that black night
in the wooden house. It seemed, Webel thought, when
outlines began dimly to shape themselves, as if the Master
had not moved from the armchair in which he had left
him the previous evening, sunk in an apathy from which
no effort could rouse him.

A faint, hoarse laugh sounded; upon this sign of life.

THE COMPOSER 217

the conductor, striving for his wonted composure, closed
the door behind him.

But after all he could not achieve composure. The
greatness of the catastrophe he apprehended had shaken
him too completely.

"Master, it is not true?"

"Of what babblest thou?"

"There has been one to the grave who has found —
achy mein Freund — has found our 'Hippolytus'!"

"Our Hippolytus is dead — did you not know
that?"

Webel wiped his wet forehead, took a blundering
step in the gloom, and fell on his knees beside the
armchair.

" Verehrtester — most revered ..." he began, and
choked. Without rising, Lothnar jerked the chair
fiercely backward.

" Webel, I hate thee "

"Why so, dear Master?" said the poor conductor,
kneeling humbly on. * Excellent, self-reliant, sensible
Teuton as he was, he was at his wits' end.

"Because thou art not Friedhelm," pursued Lothnar.
His voice had dropped to a sort of mocking sing-song.
"Because it was not you who died and left me my Hippo-
lytus. Any one of you I could have spared, but not him.
Er war mix notig — he was necessary to me. Yes — I
went to the grave in the dawn, and there they lie all
together, Prometheus, Achilles, Hippolytus — all my strong
sons, in one grave. Put up a stone, and write on it,
*Here lies the soid of Lothnar' . . ."

218 THE COMPOSER

Webel got heavily to his feet. In his extremity
calmness returned to him:

"This is madness, Herr Doktor," he said severely.

Again that uncanny laugh shook the occupant of the
armchair.

"Did you think — did you ever think I was sane, O
thou Webel?" Then the low, half-chanting utterance
was broken by a savage cry : " Begone ! '*

Webel closed the door softly behind him and again
wiped his forehead.

"Madness," he said aloud, "perhaps death! . . .
No help! Yet help must be found."

He struck his forehead as if to strike out thought.
"*He was necessary to me!* Bah — What says the
proverb? There is no necessary man." To find another
Reinhardt was impossible; but to find one who could
fill his part, and fill it well — that was surely within the
range of things that might be done. It must be done.

As the conductor stood reflecting, Mark, the servant,
came slow-footed up the stairs, gazing at a telegraphic
dispatch which he held in his hands.

"Give!" said Webel unhesitatingly.

He ox>ened the telegram and read, holding the sheet
almost touching his eyes in the absence of his spectacles :
"His Majesty graciously expects Herr Doktor Lothnar
to reconsider his decision concerning the production of
*Iphigenia* in Berlin next April."

"-4cA, Gottl** cried Webel again. With a gesture of
despair he handed back the telegram to the servant, who
read it stolidly, and nodded.

THE COMPOSER 219

" Yes, we telegraphed we would be unable to ^ve any
representation in Berlin," he conunented.

** There is no time to be lost," said Webel with a
groan, and hurled himself down the stairs.

Mark looked after him and shook his head.

"Even the Herr Direktor — gone distraught!"

CHAPTER XIX

Gloom pervaded the atmosphere of the town. It
was not so much because of the loss of their distinguished
and popular fellow townsman as of the terrible conse-
quences which seemed to threaten. Lothnar, their
great one, was mad, some said; was ill to death, others
assured. With the dimming of its star, the glory of
Frankheim faded. The theatre was closed, everything
was at a stand-still, blighted in full prosperity.. Then two
simultaneous occurrences brought consternation to its
climax: one was a notice from the Berlin official Gazette^
regretting to inform its readers that, owing to Dr.
Lothnar's ill health, all prospects of the visit of the Frank-
heim Opera Company had had to be abandoned.

We presume," the correspondent proceeded to remark,
that the distinguished composer must be very ill indeed,
otherwise we cannot conceive that he would allow any-
thing to interfere with the so graciously expressed wish
of His Majesty, whose condescension, we understand,
even went so far as to permit the substitution of the opera
*Hippolytus' for that of the originally demanded *Iphi-
genia.* When we reflect upon the all-important occasion
— nothing less than a gala performance during the
forthcoming royal visits — at which Dr. Lothnar's
work was to be presented, we realize the extent of the

8£0

THE COMPOSER 221

honour which it was His Majesty's pleasure to bestow,
as head of the German Empire, upon a German composer;
and we lament the untoward stroke of fate which has
befallen this latter at the highest point of his career.
It is impossible to obtain any definite information as
to Dr. Lothnar's state, so great is the rigorousness of
the seclusion in which, by his own wish, or that of his
friends, he is now enveloped.

''Unless it is a case of mortal illness, or, as some
would have us believe, of mental affliction, we confess
ourselves unable to understand the exceedingly prema-
ture nature of his decison."

The article was headed: "The Lothnar Riddle." It
was of course copied into the local papers; Frankheim
read, and was plunged fathoms deeper into depression.

The other disturbing event was the departure of
Dr. Webel for a destination unknown. That the con-
ductor should leave his master at such a moment seemed
inconceivable; and, while a few optimistic spirits held
to the theory either that he had been summoned by the
Emperor himself, or had undertaken some secret mission
for Lothnar, the opinion of the majority was that it was
a case of rats in a sinking ship.

"He knows it's the end; he has just gone oflF in quiet-
ness to look out for another post. There never was any
sentiment about our Webel."

This was the tenth day after the death of Reinhardt,
and it was upon the afternoon of that day that Sarolta
made up her mind to go to the Altschloss.

She slipped out of the Hegemannsche Haus as the dusk

222 THE COMPOSER

was falling, and, through the fine ram that enveloped the
town, took the familiar road — out by the Ost Thor,
past the little wooden house; not allowing herself to
slacken pace till the gates of the park rose glistening,
with the blurred shadows of the trees behind them, in
the dim evening Ught.

The doorkeeper would have stopped her, but upon her
desperate lying assurance, "I have been sent for,"
shrugged his shoulders and let her in. But to Mark,
who after a long delay opened a grudging slit of doorway,
she dared venture upon no such brazen statement.

Recognizing her, however, he altered his defensive
attitude and opened the door widely to address her,
shaking his head in solemn negation as he did so:

"jB« gekt nichtf Friiulein; ^s gekt nickt.**

"Oh, Mark, I must see him! I must!"

Again the man repeated his refusal.

"Impossible."

But, surveying her through the fast falling darkness,
he then exclaimed that she was drenched.

**Na — to let you go back in that state, in such hound's
weather, that I cannot do. If the Master is to lose his
soprano, like his tenor, that would indeed be the end!
Come in and warm — come and dry yourself — and I will
have you driven back. Why, your teeth are chattering!
Gott, reasonable people you are not, you artists — none
of you! Thee miissen sie trinkenf Frdulein.**

Sarolta's teeth were indeed chattering, but not from
cold. She slipped her dripping cloak from her, and
hesitated a moment, terrified at her own daring; then, as

THE COMPOSER 223

the man moved toward the little red room, shot by him
up the stairs like a lapwing, deaf to the fierce yet subdued
accents that called her back.

Mark lumbered after her; but stopped halfway, flung
up his hands with a despairing gesture, and slowly retraced
his steps! Sarolta had already turned the handle of
the music-room.

Lothnar was no longer sitting in the dark, brooding.
There was a shaded lamp on his writing table, and he
was pacing the room.

He turned his head and looked, at the sound of the
opening door, and did not pause in his slow and measured
tramping. He reached the end of the room; came back
in the same fashion; he passed, looked at her again —
and went on. His glance swept her; that was all.

Without pausing, the steps reached their allotted span.
He turned — that he should go by again in this horrible
nightmare manner was more than she could endure. She
closed the door behind her, and went to meet him. The
great fear for him overwhelmed the fear of him.

" Master," she said — " Master ! "

She stretched out her hands. Just for a moment iShe
thought that he would have walked on, across her, against
her, over her. But as her hands touched his, he stopped
abruptly and laughed. Then he caught those hands
and dragged her toward the table.

"Ach, Sie sind es — it is you!"

Almost from the first she had been du to him. A
sense of foreboding seized her — her soul turned to ice
within her.

224 THE COMPOSER

"What do you want with me? How did you come
here?"

He disengaged himself from her clinging fingers, tore
the shade off the lamp, and then fixed his eyes upon her.
A fierce and angry stare it was, out of that pale face,
from the cavernous setting of those eyes — eyes that had
watched long hours in the dark, straining desperately
after a lost vision — eyes that had known in their burning
wakefulness no softening of tears.

If they had been mad eyes before, in their hour of
triumph and illumination, they were mad indeed now,
with the soul's savage rebellion against an immutable
decree.

"Let me look at this creature who breaks in upon my
sacred solitude, who dares to intrude her puling presence
upon me — upon me who have said that I would remain
alone. Let me look at her, the bold one! It takes a
woman to do these things. Vanity, thou art a woman!
Well — what will you have of me? Speak, then, since
here you are ! What is it? Do I not say to you — speak ! "

The words foamed upon his lips, breaking from the
angry soreness of his heart as the torrent pent in some
secret cavern breaks unexpectedly, raging down the moun-
tain-side. Before she had time to answer him — before
indeed she could bring her thoughts together out of the
pain and terror that had seized her — he had flung himself
from her; had taken one more stormy tramp about the
room, and then, as if his strength had suddenly failed,
let himself fall into his chair, covering his face with his
hand. Convulsive sounds shook him. She did not

THE COMPOSER 225

know if it was sobbing or laughter; but she felt, all at
once, the dry agony that lay waste in his soul; and
everything within her melted into a great yearning sorrow
for his sorrow. She faltered a step toward him, holding
out her arms; then they dropped to her side: he was
speaking. Instinct bade her let him speak out his
bitterness. Perhaps then she might have a chance to
speak in her turn — to tell him that all was not gone from
him — that her love might yet bring comfort.

"To be alone — to be alone!" he was saying; "that
is not much to ask! Alone — and the darkness! They
leave him to lie alone in the dark — why should not I be
left — I who have died with him — who am dead too!
Lothnar, who was for Art created, is dead! Kill
Lotiinar's Art and what of his carcass? . . . what
of a dog's carcass? And was he not all my Art to me?
What I conceived in my soul — that he gave out to the
world. Without him I am a dumb man. And I loved
him — the only creature on earth I loved. . . .What
is this?"

She had cast herself on her knees beside him; with
frenzied hands she caught his. As he repulsed her, she
clutched at hb knees, and, as furiously he backed his
chair from her, at his very feet:

"Master! — Master! Do not say so! Have you not
still got me — your little Sarolta, your Singer? Oh, do
not forget that I am Sarolta, whom you said you loved."

"I?"

He pushed his chair still farther out of her reach,
but this time quietly. He sat, looking down upon her.

226 THE COMPOSER

The fury of grief, which was almost insanity, was gone
from him. He seemed to have cast it off as a man may
cast a mantle. There was complete self-control in that
single cutting interrogation — "I?"

She cried out as if under a blow.

"You loved me — you did love me . . . You
kissed me!"

"I kissed you," said Lothnar slowly.

She looked up at him. His face was twisted with a
dreadful smile; but he was calm.

A sick dizziness came upon her. She staggered to
her feet, groping at the table for support. Was it pos-
sible that he had never said he loved her? She sought
in the darkness of her mind for memory and could not
find it.

Like straws in a whirlpool there floated about her
the thoughts of many things that he had said and done;
how he had looked upon her; how he had held her —
kissed her.

"I will kiss you once, that love may flower on your
lips — " but he had not kissed her. "So eine Phcedra
wie Sie mir aus dent Herzen gesprungen! "

"You said — you said — " Her voice trailed off.
"What am I to you, then?"

"What you are to me? — Nothing. What were you
to me? — A reed that I fashioned into a pipe for my song.
You were to me Iphigenia. Then I made of you Phsedra.
Now my Hippolytus is dead, and there will be no Phcedra
ever again. I want you no more. Ah, my Hippolytus!"
The wildness began to gather anew into voice and eyes.

THE COMPOSER %%1

" The music is mute and for ever. It lies suffocated under
that gravestone. You little fooU And I put you with
my Hippolytus to live, and you saw that splendour
of manhood and it said to you — nothing! Of what
were you made, woman? I had to teach you myself.
And now it is wasted!"

Suddenly he clutched the arm of his chair. "Out
of my sight," he screamed, "you who remind me of my
lost creation, my still-born child!"

Sarolta crawled from the room. Like some dumb ani-
mal that has been tortured — some poor dog that has
received blows from the hand upon which it has fawned

— there was in her a blind desire to hide away with her
pain. Nothing more.

She had an indistinct impression of Mark endeavouring
to arrest her in the hall, and of breaking from him out
into the night so fiercely that he had fallen back as if
afraid. So the tortured thing may snap at the helping
hand. Then, once in the open, she ran. She was alone,
and the rain was beating against her face, and it was dark.
Lothnar had called for that: to be alone and in the dark!

— Ah, how would she ever endure now to be otherwise?
Alone, and in the dark! And the rain? It felt against
her cheeks like the tears that she would never be able
to shed. She was scorched with shame.

She ran till she struck the trunk of a tree, saving her
face instinctively with outflung hands. She sank at
the foot of it, feeling that all strength had left her.

She knew that she was still somewhere in the Altschloss
park, not far perhaps from the spot where she had brought.

228 THE COMPOSER

on that golden morning, a heart of flaming rapture.
Now the rain pattered on myriad leaves about her;
once and again the wind would seize the trees wildly
and rush away. All was black around her and in her
heart — O God, what blackness was there — blackness
and scorching flame!

That single exclamation "I?" had put her from him
more utterly than all his wild words. Those she could
have borne. Had he struck her in his angry sorrow,
she would have found it in her to kiss the hand that
struck. But that word, cutting like a knife, cold as ice,
had shown her her place in his arrogant life too surely,
too cruelly, to leave room for doubt. She had been his
tool to work with, his reed to play upon and be flung
aside — a broken thing, no longer needed ! He had taken
her very soul, and behold! it was no more to him than
the dead leaf fluttering from the tree. And she — what
had she not thought herself? His beloved, his chosen,
his mate — his Singer! The height of her own presump-
tion stared her in the face. "I — ?'* I, Lothnar, greatest
man of the century, Olympian genius . . . and
Sarolta Vaneck, the obscure little singer, the reed
he had fashioned, played upon, broken and thrown
away!

Das Lied ist ausl . . .

It was Friedhelm who used to sing Die Beiden Grenor
diere; she remembered the tragic passion and glory of his
voice upon those very words. . . . Dear Friedhelm!
He had thought of her at his last breath. Hute Dich,

THE COMPOSER 229

Sarolta!" What had he foreseen in that dying vision?
Oh, God! was it this hour?

"Oh, Friedhelm, let me die too!"

When she came back to a sense of actual life, she
found that her face was all wet. Not from the rain alone,
for her lips were salt; and she thought it must have been
because of Friedhelm that she had cried. She was aching
in every limb and unutterably weary. A moment it
seemed that the easiest thing for her to do would be to
lie on, lost in the woods, in the night, and let life ebb
away from her. Then some remnant of bruised pride,
some instinct of virginal distaste, rebelled against the
thought. To be found dead in Lothnar's park! — the
talk, the gossip, the scandal! . . . Rough, unknown
hands of men lifting that dead body of hers that only
Lothnar's arm had ever encircled! She shuddered from
the vision. And now a new terror came upon her lest
she should not have the strength to rise and get away.
With trembling hands she shook out her wet skirts,
straightened her sodden hat, dragged the soaked veil
over her face. Her gloves and her doak she had for-
gotten in the hall; she longed for them now as she
thrust her chilled fingers as far as possible down the
sleeves of her coat.

The gatekeeper stared at her, forgetting to grumble
at this belated summons; forgetting even to question
in his loutish surprise. She passed from the light of the
gate into the misty gloom of the highroad. A slow grin
began to spread over the man's face:

230 THE COMPOSER

"That one lied to me and she has been punished —
tuchtigl "

And, closing the gate with a clash, he returned to his
pipe by the stove comer, with a lively sense of justice
fulfilled.

How Sarolta managed to walk the long way back to
the Hegemannsche Haus can only be explained by the fact
that there are times of transcendent agony of spirit, when
the body becomes a mere machine — docile, insentient.

She stood at length upon the familiar doorstep, and,
still mechanically, stretched out a numbed hand to the
bell. It was then she felt that it might be diflBcult for
her to get up the stairs to her bedroom. And all at once
that piercing concentration of inner suffering became a
blank, and she knew only a physical craving for the white
bed, for the solitude in the dark.

The door was opened violently. Frau Hegemann's
angular form became outlined against the inner lamplight.
She had a black knitted shawl over her head and was
holding it under her chin with a fleshless finger and thumb.

"Where do you come from?"

"I beg your pardon."

To herself Sarolta seemed to speak as from some
distant place. So had Friedhelm spoken, the night he
died.

"Where do you come from?" The question was
repeated so harshly that the girl's dim wits were struck
into some comprehension. She answered like a hypno-
tized child:

«'

«l

THE COMPOSER 231

From the Altschloss."

So — " , Frau Hegemann's voice rang with a malig-
nant triumph. "So, frSuIein! I thought it even so.
Did I not warn you that this is a respectable house?
— ^a house for respectable people? You — what do
you look like? The water is dripping off you, and you
h^ve leaves in your hat. Ach, I ask no question! Find
for yourself another lodging. You can send for your
luggage; across my threshold you do not pass. I
took you in when Frau Reinhardt turned you out, but
this is too much! To the Altschloss alone — and no
shame on you! One so brazen!"

The words fell now with no more sense upon Sarolta's
mind than if the rain had turned to hailstones about her
ears. Her eyes were fixed as if fascinated on those skele-
ton fingers. How could any one expect anything of
human softness from a hand like that!

Then she saw the door close against her and gave a
helpless cry — "Oh, please let me in!" She heard the
dick of the lock, and -saw the wet panels facing her
relentlessly.

She turned, dazed, and looked down the street. The
lamplight flickered on the shining pavement.

A droschke, laden with luggage, was crawling up the
cobbled roadway. The coachman's head was bent
against the driving wind; the sorry jade stumbled and
slipped at nearly every step. Sarolta saw, without see-
ing. She felt a dreadful ebbing away of all her strength.
A thought came shooting across her brain. Better, after
all, to have died in the woods.

282 THE COMPOSER

A cry rang out — a ciy upon her own name — mixed an-
guish and joy.

"Sarolta! Sarolta!*'

Some one had sprung out of that droschke — some one
extraordinarily active and in a very great hurry. And
then Sarolta felt warm arms about her, kisses and tears
upon her face; and then for a while she did not know
anything any more.

CHAPTER XX

"And so, my dear," said Sady, "when they offered
me an engagement for Michaela — Michaela! — I just
said to madame: 'I'll chuck the career and go off to
Sarolta!* My goodness, every time I've been to * Car-
men,' when that Michaela creature comes in, I said to
myself: * If that isn't the very lowest part any poor singer
has ever had to stoop to!* Madame said, * You've got
to begin, child/ And I said, *When you begin with
Michaela, you stay put.' "

She broke off. She knew that look in Sarolta's eyes:
not one word of what she had said had reached her
friend's mind.

Miss Schreiber gave a little sigh of impatient sadness.
It was now nearly a week since she had carried her
fainting friend from the doorstep of the Hegemannsche
Haus to the nearest hotel. She had clothed her in her
own night-garments and put her to bed like a child.
She had further watched by her till the morning, though
the doctor, promptly called in, had been reassuring, not
to say contemptuous of mere feminine vapours:

*'Gelaufen im Nasseuy erkaUet, aufgerechty nichts gegessen
— mrd nichtsi — run about in the wet, caught cold,
eaten no dinner — it is nothing!" Such had been his
verdict.

238

234 THE COMPOSER

He left a prescription with ammonia in it, and advised
a milky or preferably (being a native) a beer posset.
He was so far justified that next day Sarolta had neither
fever nor any return of unconsciousness, and that she
consented quite obediently to drink the hot milk that
her friend insisted upon. But this very docility was
part of a condition that frightened Sady far more than
would a physical ailment. Sarolta lay as if the very
spring of her life had run down.

She expressed no surprise at Sady's presence, no
gratitude for her attentions, beyond a certain childlike
abandonment to them. She could find no smile for the
lively description of her friend's interview with Frau
Hegemann, and of the complete manner in which she had
routed that "poisonous old lady." (To Frau Hegemann's
slanderous insinuations Sady discreetly made no other
reference.)

Sady felt that, until she could get Sarolta to confide
in her, she could do nothing. "She just seems to me,"
she said to herself, "to be bleeding to death from a
hidden wound."

But Sarolta kept her lips obstinately closed. Only
once she said:

"There will be no more music in Frankheim ever
again, and my career is broken."

And Sady answered briskly.

"Nonsense! Geniuses always go on like that. That's
well known. Think of Wagner — Think of Tennyson!
Did not Rossetti bury all his poems in his wife's grave. . .
and dig them up afterward? You bet that Lothnar

THE COMPOSER 235

has got a copy of 'Hippolytus' quite safe somewhere —
and you'll be his Phaedra all right!"

But Sarolta shuddered, hid her face in her pillow, and
moaned: "Never, never!" And when Sady clasped her
and tried to comfort and coax the trouble from her, she
trembled still more and shrank so pitifully that Sady
felt the hidden wound to be one of such agony that it
could not bear even her touch.

Long hours Sarolta lay; and long hours her little
friend sat by her bed, thinking and wondering.

When she had received that mad scrawl from the
wooden house: "I am the most happy, or the most
unhappy of women," Sady had made up her mind that
she was needed. It had taken her some time to break
down madame's opposition and disengage herself from
an aU^but signed contract. But the American had her
own code of friendship and of its duties, and her will
was as firm as her temper was sweet. That is the kind
of character that gets its own way through life. She
had resolved to surprise Sarolta, being anxious, as she
phrased it to herself, to walk right into things straight off.

She had driven first to the wooden house, where Rosa
had expressed round-eyed surprise at her demand for
FrSulein Vaneck. "But the fraulein has gone! Frau
Hegemann has taken her away! Our lady here would
not keep her! It was the day of the herr's funeral."

It seemed natural enough that the widow should yearn
for solitude in her grief; yet Sady gathered something
unpleasant from the maid's tone and mien. Witness
of the subsequent scene on the steps of the boarding-house.

236 THE COMPOSER

she was, of course, by no means unprepared for Frau
Hegemann's sinister innuendos on the succeeding day:

"'You ask an explanation, frILulein. I prefer to make
no charges. But ask Frau Reinhardt why she refused
to keep your friend under her roof, and see if she will
answer you! There are things German ladies do not
like to talk about."

"You are a vile old woman!" cried Sady, a scarlet
spot on each cheek. "I am sure I don't want to know
the horrible ideas that sprout in German ladies' minds!"

She had come off triumphant, with the last word;
discharged the account; swept all Sarolta's little belong-
ings into her carriage, and royally tipped the panting
maid. But she had food for disturbing thought and
conjecture. That Sarolta had been at the Altschloss
and had there received that deadly soul- wound, she knew
by intuition. But what had Lothnar done to her friend.'^
she asked herself. What had passed between them?
She could not conceive that the composer, in his strenuous
mental life, should ever have had a thought of returning
the feeling which the innocent child-singer had lavished
upon him; yet the American had a knowledge of men and
things beyond her years, and she had always thought
Sarolta lovely and gifted above the rest of the world.
Perhaps he had played with her adoration, thought
Sady, flushing in secret anger — and then had refused
to see her, perhaps. Yet that hardly seemed enough.
No, she knew that there must be more — something far
more deeply affecting all the girl's outlook on life. Had
she, herself, not had dire forebodings?

THE COMPOSER 237

How Sarolta had shuddered at the very name of Phae-
dra! How she had shrunk from her touch — how she
had moaned!

Partial elucidation came when Herr Webel returned
to Frankheim as unexpectedly as he had left. Once
more the whole town buzzed with rumour and excitement.
Herr Webel had not returned alone; he had brought one
Carolus Peters with him — a Dutchman — who had been
last season's success at Covent Garden, in the rdles of
Siegfried and Tristan.

The news spread, in spite of all efforts at secrecy, that
the orchestra had actually been called together for rehear-
sal, and that the new tenor had made a private trial of
his voice in the theatre.

Then all Frankheim learned that Herr Webel had
been to the Hegemannsche Haus to look for Fraulein
Vaneck; and that, when its mistress had disclaimed osten-
tatiously all connection with the young lady, the conductor
had stolidly cursed her.

Herr Webel was, however, his usual concentrated and
businesslike self when Sady found him in her little
sitting-room. He demanded Sarolta.

"Sarolta is ill."

*^Achy wasl^^ said he. "A cold?" He tapped his
throat under his beard. His round eyes protruded, and a
threatening growl came into his tones: it was as though he
forbade her to admit such a catastrophe.

."Oh, no — it's not a cold. It's — she's in bed."

"Have you a doctor?"

288 THE COMPOSER

"No — she's not ill enough for that. Just dreadfully
nervous and upset."

The man drew a sibilant breath of relief.

**Ach sol Ja^ natiirlichl Tell her I want to speak
to her."

"But she's in bed."

"ShewiUgetup."

"HerrWebel "

9f

Es pressierty FravleinJ
" I will go," said the girl doubtfully, " and tell her

"Tell her I want her to sing in three days' time."

"Good heavens!"

"In 'Iphigenia,' for Dr. Lothnar. Tell her — for Dr.
Lothnar."

"I don't suppose for a moment," said Sady from the
door, "that she will be able to crawl out of bed."

"Tell her I can't wait long."

Sady did not know whether she was more amused or
angry, as she went on her errand. But, at her very
first words, the Teuton's self-sufficient certainty stood
justified. A light leapt into Sarolta's far-away eyes,
colour into her cheeks. She, whom her friend had
thought sometimes so exhausted and weary that she could
never catch on to life again, bounded from her pillows
with the movements of a healthy child.

"Quick, Sady, quick! Oh, dear, couldn't you do my
hair while I put on my stockings? Just a plait and two
hairpins, anyway. Oh, any dress! Sady, Sady!" She
only paused once in her frenzied haste, to catch at her
friend's hands. "Did he say Dr. Lothnar had sent

THE COMPOSER £39

him — for me? — for me? Oh, Sady — oh, you don't
know what it means!"

"He said it was for Dr. Lothnar," said Sady slowly.
She did not exactly know why, but this joy of her friend
seemed more piteous than her sorrow.

As Sarolta rushed in, Herr Webel regarded her with a
German disfavour of dishevelled locks and excited woman-
hood. Frau Bertha, with her symmetrical waves of
hair, her trim, aproned figure; Frau Bertha, who had
cooked so well for her husband while he lived, and
smoothed the sheet so tidfly over him when he died —
that was his ideal.

"Please, fraulein, be seated," he said — Sady thought
with the air of a dentist addressing a nervous patient.

The eager question died unspoken on Sarolta's lips.
Arrested in her headlong advance, she sat meekly as she
was bidden, twisting her hands together, her colour
fluctuating. She went quite white before Herr Webel
had finished the exposition of his errand.

The light died out of her face as if some inner flame
had been extinguished — Lothnar had not sent for her!
Herr Webel was no ambassador from the Altschloss. It
was something very different indeed. It was this: the
Master's friends were so alarmed by his continued apathy,
that, in the hope of rousing him from it, a plan had been
formed among them — a singular, an almost desperate
plan — in the hopes of surprising him back into the love
of his own work again; in other words, into a zest for life
once more.

To this end it was proposed to give a performance of

240 THE COMPOSER

''Iphigenia" in the little disused theatre of^the AJtschloss,
and to lure Lothnar to be present at the last moment.
A tenor had been found for Achilles — one whose voice
could be compared to Friedhelm's.

"The same it is not>" said Webel. He was talking
solenmly to the two girls, almost as if he liked to rehearse
out loud the many arguments he had addressed to him-
self in support of his scheme. "Two voices are never
the same. But it is a good voice. And we will not
have too much light on the scene. In his armour and
helmet, and the rest, he will pass. He is a stout fellow.
Na — even if he makes the Master angry, that will be
something. Then the Master will say perhaps to me:
*You fool to bring me such an one! — Why, in Frank-
heim alone I could have picked a better.' And perhaps
he will try to put his word to the proof. Na — at any rate
we will have shown him the Achilles is not everything
in his great work — I, with my orchestra, and the rest
of his picked ones: you, too, frfiulein, we will show him
that all is not Achilles. Will there not be his own Aga-
memnon, his own Clytemnestra — his own Iphigenia?"

He paused.

''Singen mussen Sie, Fraulein.

Sarolta's white face became once more suffused with
crimson.

"I will sing." Defiance was in that cry — defiance of
her own weakness, perhaps, or defiance of Fate. The
man bent his brows.

"You can sing? Your friend says youVe been ill."

Sarolta flung her angry glance toward Sady; then.

THE COMPOSER 241

without a word, sprang to her feet and ran to the piano.
She struck a few chords and her voice rang out. In her
extremity she did not hesitate in her choice; it was
Phsedra's first song upon which she ventured — a wail,
high-pitched and rising ever higher, as the voice of a
lamenting woman will rise, till it seems as if it must
break upon its own height of misery. Only perhaps
Lothnar's art and Sarolta's voice could have ventured
upon such a test of sound.

The orchestral accompaniment to this was a mysterious
current of rich yet low sounds: it somehow conveyed
an impression as of dark and sullen waters under a dark
sky, between which circled the desperate flight of a white
bird fighting against the wind. Even now, though her
fingers only sketched a note or two of supporting accom-
paniment, the effect was extraordinary.

Webel drew a long breath.

^'Na^ 68 war dock grossartig! A pity for the 'Hippoly-
tus'!" he muttered in his beard. Then, abruptly: "It
still goes, Fraulein Sarolta," he said and rose from his
seat. "With the voice there is nothing amiss. You
will be told the time of rehearsals."

He gave two jerky bows,^took up his hat, and departed
without another word.

Sarolta remained standing by the piano, staring
straight before her. It was the look her friend dreaded.

"Oh, darling!** cried the little American, moved, she
knew not why, almost to tears. "Your voice is divine:
but it's just heart-breaking — Sarolta, I don't think you're
fit to sing."

242 THE COMPOSER

Sarolta came back to the things about her with a
fierce start. She put Sady's arm away from her, and
said slowly ^ between her teeth:

"Don't you understand it's life or death to me!"

Sady looked at the set face and the unyouthf ul strain
in the eyes, thoughtfully and in silence.

"Of course you'll sing, honey," she said at last, in
soothing, everyday tones. "Better than ever, too. I've
never heard you in such voice."

But that very afternoon she sent a telegram to Sir
John Holdfast. It was couched in these words:

Your chance at last. Don't stop for luncheon. — Sady.

Though the tone of this message was jocose, the girl's
heart was heavy wiih foreboding as she handed it over
to the official.

CHAPTER XXI

It was a work of diflBculty to fit the orchestra into
the little private, old-world theatre of the Altschloss
— designed for the bergeries & la WaUeaUy and the powder
and patch artificialities of bygone days — and Webel
had not only to make some elimination in its ranks, but
to order a lowering of all effects to fit the narrowed sur-
roundings. A temporary scheme of lighting had also to be
arranged;, and the conductor, with endless patience and
ingenuity, had devised schemes which should throw
certain figures into light and yet keep shadowy the make-
shift background and the exiguous stage.

"I will have," he explained, "a kind of dream perfor-
mance. You understand, all of you: the Master sitting
yonder, alone, in the dark, must see you here as in a
dream. Everything must be low-toned but exquisite.
I will have it perfect, but dim. You must watch over
yourselves: nothing violent, nothing breaking out; yet
every shade kept in its lowered measure, as it were seen
in twilight. Nothing lost, I repeat, yet all subdued."

Never, perhaps, had the good man spoken so much,
or so earnestly. The deep poetry inherent in the Teutonic
nature pierced now through his stolid personality.

When Sarolta found herself that evening one of the
group in the faded anteroom adjoining the stage, it

24S

244 THE COMPOSER

seemed to her, indeed, as if she were in a dream. Tlie
unfamiliar spaces about her: Clytemnestra, Agamemnon,
the High Priest, the ChoroSy familiar figures in familiar
garments, yet looking somehow strangely unlike them-
selves; and Achilles, clad in the armour she knew so well,
had so horrible a resemblance to the beloved Achilles of
their happy days, that every time he turned his head,
the horrible dissimilarity struck her like a blow. It had
all the grotesque pain of a nightmare.

There was a constrained sense of expectation. No one
knew what this night would bring forth; and though
Webel was confident of luring the Master down to the
theatre, there was still the possibility of his refusing to
be present, and of the whole undertaking ending in abject
futility.

Nothing could begin until Webel reappeared with the
news of success or failure. The new Achilles, obviously
repenting of his heart-whole proffer of himself, concealed
a real nervousness under airs of growing and sullen
impatience — shoulder-shrugs and such. Clytemnestra
suddenly announced that she would scream if something
did not happen soon. No one paid any attention to her;
but Agamemnon, declaring that he was cold, put his
fur-lined coat over his Greek robes with fantastic effect.
Sarolta*s teeth were chattering.

Webel suddenly appeared in the doorway, so quietly
that it seemed to her still part of the dream. He was
very pale, but extraordmarily cahn.

"All is in order," he said, "I go to my place in the
orchestra." He paused. Through his glasses, his round

THE COMPOSER 245

eyes moved from one to the other. "I must beg you all"
— there crept a note of emotion into his low tones —
"to remember my instructions; to remember above every-
thing that each of you holds to-night our beloved Master's
fate» so to speak, in his hands. You will sing to a dark
theatre, and to but one person. But never in your lives
will you sing to such an important audience or to such
momentous issues!" He ended with a quaint gesture
of his hands that was almost a folding of them. **GoU
gebt uns alie Mvih!" he said, and with that prayer upon
his lips, went as quietly as he had come.

The next thing Sarolta knew was the stealing upon her
ear of the well-remembered strains of the Overture. The
opera began with the march of the impatient and weary
soldiers in Aulis. It used to grow as if from the dis-
tance, into splendid clangour, barbaric blare and clash,
till the very eye seemed full of the pageant and move-
ment of the youth of a world of heroes. Now she realized,
though but vaguely, with what a superb command of his
art the conductor was contriving to keep low every efiFect
yet not mar one of them. It was a vision of the past;
but, as he had wished, a vision in a twilight reverie.

Agamenmon rose and went forth, joined by the group
of warriors; the armour clanked as they went by her;
then she could hear the tramping on the boards of the
stage. Two or three of the Greek maidens crept closer
to the stove; and Clytemnestra, with a twisted smile,
caught up Agamenmon's cast-off fur coat, and wrapped
it round her. She went then toward the wing and stood
watching.

246 THE COMPOSER

Presently Agamemnon's voice, deep-noted, broke
across the music, and Clytenmestra came back toward
Iphigenia:

"Brrr! child," she said, "I tell you this likes me not.
The black theatre, empty and cold, with but that one
creature in it — and he, they say, mad! I'm glad you
go in before me. How white you look! Don't you
rouge for the first act? . . . You are not listening to a
word I say. Ugh! what am I doing here? I feel as if I
were the only live flesh and blood being among ghosts."

Clutching the fur across her capacious breast, she went
back into the room, calling in whispers upon Carolus
Peters to let her pinch him to see if he, at least, were
real.

Sarolta sat on as if turned to stone; all bodily sensation
had well-nigh left her. With an intensity born of her
single passion, she felt the tragic presence, solitary in
the black chasm of the theatre; she flung her soul out
upon each wave of music; calling him back from a grave
deeper than the dead man's, to Life and Art again.
Lothnar, whom she loved, who had kissed her soul awake,
who had called the red fire into her life — yonder he was,
in his sorrow! . . . She must forget that last hour
with him, forget those terrible wounds that he had dealt
her pride, her self-confidence, her very womanhood.
Perhaps, if she sang as she used to sing — nay, surely
to-night she must sing as never before, did not she hold
his fate in her hands, as Webel had said? — she might
be once again his singer to him . . . "his Singer,
sprung from his heart!" No, it was of Phsedra he had

THE COMPOSER 247

so spoken, not of Iphlgenia. Oh, if it were only Phaedra
to-night! She was not Iphigenia any more . . .
she was Phaedra, burning away, wasting, dying for one
whisper, one sign of love! . . . Phaedra!

The dream music rolled on; and the Iphigenia theme
was being woven into the rough, agonized, storm-driven
cadences that ever beat round the figure of Agamemnon
— the theme of Iphigenia, pure, exquisitely young,
flower-fresh, piteous in its very joy and confidence of
life! But in her soul it was the wail of Phaedra that now
was resounding, the desperate flight of the white bird
against the gale — bitter waves below, black clouds
above. . .

Sarolta started. Clytemnestra was shaking her:

"Aber, Kindy they're waiting. Haste!"

Webel, with his master coolness, glided his orchestra
into a repetitibn of the passage.

^*Vater, mein VaterT' angrily hissed the prompter.

Sarolta sprang to her feet, and ran upon the stage like
a hunted thing.

*' Voter, mein Vaterl^* . . . Iphigenia's entrance
was heralded by that cry, shrill and gay as the pipe of
a shepherd on the hill-top. Only yesterday Webel had
had special praise — unwonted favour — for her rendering
of those opening notes. To-night she caught up the cry,
as she ran, true and pure enough; but, once on the stage,
with the gloomy throbbing of the Agamemnon music
about her, there came upon her an extraordinary hallu-
cination. It seemed to her that she was not Iphigenia,
but Phaedra; that, from where he sat in the darkness

248 THE COMPOSER

Lothnar was calling it out to her: "Iphigenia never
again, but Phffidra — my Phaedra!" She fought against
the madness. Instinctively her bodily senses tried to
keep to the ordered theme; as if it belonged to some one
else, she heard her own voice waver on the girlish tender-
ness of the words:

" Father — be mine, all mine to-day —

Oh, smooth thy knitted brow, unbend and smile ! "

But even as Agamemnon's hands embraced her
shoulders, the illusion returned, in fuller force this time.
This was Lothnar 's touch upon her! He was speaking
to her quite clearly now, through the confusion of a music
which no longer meant anything in her ear! "Between
the white of the Iphigenia fire and the white of Phaedra's
fire, there lies the red! . . . You can go back never
again!"

How silly they all were to play that Iphigenia music,
when it was Phsedra he wanted her to be! . . . Since
she was Phsedra, why did this man hold her? No man
held Phaedra: she was all to him who scorned her.

She wrenched herself from Agamemnon's clasp, which
had tightened in amazement upon her, turned full upon
the dark abyss of the auditorium and flung out the whole
strength of her voice to that unseen silent one, in Phaedra's
lament; in those notes, first stammered, passion white,
to his teaching.

A wave of Webel's b&ton brought a crescendo to drown
those piercing tones. Clytenmestra caught her by the
elbow. She heard a savage whisper: "You have lost

THE COMPOSER 249

your senses!" A low-muttered order, and once again
the orchestra, with hardly a hesitation, went back upon
its theme.

She broke from the spell that held her, to the hideous
reality. With eyes like those of an angry cat, Webel
was glaring at her over his desk. It seemed to her as
if all the eyes of the orchestra were upon her too, up-
braiding, raging. And Agamemnon's, Clytemnestra's,
the warriors'. . . worse than all, imseen eyes from
that darkness — searing her with scorn!

It was her cue — light, caressing, tender:

Smooth thy knitted brow, unbend and smile!

Then, hoarsely the notes came. The playful turn upon
the last words should once more have fallen like the
artless measure of the shepherd's pipe, innocent of any
emotion but that of a mere joy of life. Sarolta felt her
breath fail upon them. She tried to catch the note;
missed, made a desperate leap of all her strength
to reach the next bar, could bring forth nothing but a
strangled sob.

A moment she stood, struck rigid by the horror of her
own disaster. The unity of the instruments wavered
and broke. The conductor's b&ton fiercely rapped the
desk, and there descended an awful silence — in the midst
of which a laugh rang out at her! A laugh from the
depth of the darkness that beat upon her as if with
whips, and drove her from the stage, running, stumbling
in agonized haste to escape from it.

She brushed past Achilles, who hung about the wing;

260 THE COMPOSER

and though the ejaculation he flung at her had no mean-
ing in her ear, she knew that he looked at her as if he
could have killed her.

The execrations of every one pursued her — he knew
that. She had failed Webel, who had put such issues
into her hands; she had failed those who worked with her;
she had spoiled, perhaps irretrievably, the chances of
the new Achilles. But what was it all to the knowledge
that she had failed Lothnar! Oh, that laughter! Would
she ever get it out of her soul, that jeering, contemptuous,
bitter, mad laughter!

No one tried to stop her as, blindly, she rushed across
the artists' room toward the antechamber beyond. But
it was, after all, into Sady's arms that she ran — Sady,
who had been forbidden to come this night, yet had
followed in secret and waited, wrapped in her furs — a
little monument of devoted patience.

Sady had not the least idea of what was happening,
shut off in the little cold hall. But one glance was
enough: her worst foreboding had been fulfilled. It
was her own wraps that she flung round the distraught
creature, still in the lovely flutter of those Greek robes,
in which once she had touched such heights of joy and
triumph — and, without a question, led her friend
tenderly to the carriage she had kept in waiting without,
and bade the driver hurry back to the hotel.

As they were carried through the darkness of the
avenue, still there was silence between them; only Sady
drew her comrade into her embrace, with a gesture that
was maternal in its pity. And Sarolta lay, as one broken,

THE COMPOSER 251

shaken from head to foot by long shudderings. Only
once she spoke:

Oh, Sady, Sady!" she cried; and then clinging:
Sady, take me away!"

Yes, yes, darling," soothed Sady, and thought of her
telegram with a little inner comfort in the midst of the
desolation she shared so truly.

"Take me away!" that was Sarolta's repeated cry
during the night that followed. She lay in the kind
arms that had caught her in the moment of her utmost
need; but no warmth of love, no soothing of the most
delicate ingenuity of tenderness could touch the restless
misery that possessed her.

To be away from Frankheim, from the place where she
had known such bliss and anguish — away from those
eyes that had shot wrath upon her, from the sound of
the reproaching voices, from the echo of that laughter,
to be hidden away — that was all she wanted.

As a woman Lothnar had contemned her; as an artist
he had mocked her. Like a devastating fire, the power
of the man had come over her, consumed all that was
lovely and trusting and tender in her nature and had
left her waste. . . . And in the end he had laughed!

If he went mad now (as people said he might), or if he
died, they who had been her conu'ades would heap the
blame upon her, and no one would ever know that he
had driven her mad first. No one must ever know this:
that he had made of her a Phsedra, and had killed the
Iphigenia in her!

252 THE COMPOSER

As the hours of that long tortured night fell away»
numbered maddenmgly by the belfries of Frankheim^
the shrinking horror grew upon her to frenzy. Sady,
who would gladly have delayed another day in antici-
pation of John Holdfast's arrival — she had had no
answer from him, but anxiously expected his appearance
at any moment — found herself obliged to prepare for
the earliest possible start.

Their trunks were packed, the bill paid; Sarolta sat,
clothed for the journey, shivering in spite of her furs,
waiting for the moment of departure in the little sitting-
room, while Sady surveyed the loading of the luggage
in the hall below. Miss Schreiber had resolved not to
bring her friend much farther than Cologne, where they
could rest amid new surroundings, and from where she
could communicate afresh with Sir John Holdfast.

Even as the last box was being hoisted on the top of
the gay red and green omnibus, a droschke drove furiously
up to the door, and out of it leaped a travelled-stained,
very energetic young man. Sady ran forward at sight of
the well-known broad figure, in the loose-skirted sporting
coat. The feeling of solid British honesty and steadfast-
ness which John Holdfast always brought about with
him, filled her soul with a sense of relief so acute that
she nearly burst into tears.

* *0h, Johnny, Johnny ! *' she cried, holding out both hands.

Sarolta had drawn her armchair close to the stove
and sat huddled against its warmth, waiting on, with

THE COMPOSER 253

a kind of dazed impatience. At the sound of the opening
door» she drew her thick veil over her face and rose.

"How long youVe been!" she said pettishly without
turning her head» as she tied the folds of gossamer under
her chin.

"Sarolta!''

There was a note of exhilaration in Sady's voice that
oommanded attention.

Sarolta looked then, and through the web of gray saw
mistily the good face all knotted with anxiety, and yet
somehow radiant with hope, of her faithful lover. She
made a blind movement toward him, hardly knowing
that she did so.

He was beside her — he had caught her hands:
I am here," he was saying in his blundering way —

I am here, Sarolta."
Some day, one never can telly you may want a friendy^
had he said to her long ago in Paris. K ever forlorn
human creature wanted a friend it was she! And
Johnny was here.

"She just fell against him," said Sady to herself
afterward, thinking back upon the scene.

Thus a child who in search of fairy adventure has
lost its way in the alluring cruel woods and been found
again may fall into the arms of its nurse, the safe and
natural refuge, and think it peace.

It was only Johnny — no lover to bring fire and joy,
no Titan to lift the soul off its standing-place and whirl
it to heights of unbelievable rapture — but only poor
humdrum, long-suffering, inevitable, unchaniguig Johnny.

CHAPTER XXII

(two tbabs latbb)

Madame Costanza emerged, with some difficulty but
not without dignity, from the station fly, mounted the
steps of Chilburgh Castle and crossed its granite portico
with an alacrity that amazed the footman following be-
hind her. Two years more of jovial life had increased
those majestic proportions (and the lines of a fashionable
purple tailor-made did not serve to disguise them) but
the lady's energy was unimpaired by time, or weight. So
superb was the condescension with which she swept in
upon them that footman and butler gave way before her
as if her appearance had been not only an expected but an
honouring event.

"Lady Holdfast is at home? That is well. You need
not ask — you can announce me. " She paused, wreathed
in smiles. "I am an old friend,'* she said in her precise
English. "Your mistress will be very glad to see me."

The butler was too well trained to allow the smallest
responsive softening of his own countenance. He ushered
the visitor, across the marble spaces of the hall, into a
room on the right, requested her name, and departed
with the non-committal assurance that he would inform
her ladyship.

254

THE COMPOSER 255

Madame Costanza stood in the middle of the room and
chuckled.

"Inform her ladyship!" she mimicked to herself.
"3fa petite Sarolta!" And then she looked about her,
with an eye of Ughtning appreciation. "Faith, we are
finely lodged! . . . Saperlipopette if those garlands
are not du Grinling Gibbons, my adoration! And old
masters — a Rubens, I'll swear. A Rubens, early man-
ner. . . . DieUf quel portrait! The folds of that
blue dress, swirling down the canvas . . . what a
lesson for some of those young modems!" She moved
about the room with her wonderful alert tread: "Hob-
bema — Giorgione. What a thing it is to have ancestors !
It was never our Johnny who collected those treasures —
I'll lay my head to that ! Hey, the beautiful room ! How
mellow, how rich, how deep-toned, how subdued — how
perfectly dans le cadre! Not a thing to leap to the eye,
except those little flames roimd the logs on the great
hearth. They have their merit, these barbaric open
hearths!"

Madame Costanza's peregrinations had brought her
to the writing table. Here she paused, surveying its
fittings. With a sudden crow of laughter she recognized
her own photograph:

"Aha! here is the great Laura Costanza! It does one
pleasure, all the same, not to be quite forgotten . . . !
Sady Schreiber too, with her pretty minot^ . . . hero-
quer! Is all the gallery here? No, no, " repeated the obser-
ver thoughtfully, *^ neither Friedhelm nor Lothnar ! Who
is this splendid person with her robes of coronation?"

256 THE COMPOSER

She lifted the massive silver frame and scrutinized the
portrait. There was a dedication which she read:
"Yours aflFectionatdy, Vera Warborough."

She replaced it with an expressive sniff. "As long as
I don't find Sir Pringle to make the penianil No,
Dieu merciy it is an old lady. Do I not know her» that one?
Yes, I do. Ah» it is the little fat dame, at the Scheme
Aussicht, she who could not bear to hear the word
* stomach.' La pauvrel "

Madame chuckled as she contemplated the portly
presentment. "What does she say? 'Darling Sarolta,
from the godmother.' "

"Darling Sarolta! ..." The singing-mistress laid
this photograph also out of her hand, with some scorn.
"We [sing another song now! This is a base world.
What is she doing then, that little Sarolta, de me faire
le pied de gruef Is she by chance, become grand, with all
this grandeur? Eh — that would not suit me any day,
above all not to-day. "

With an air of severity upon her countenance, corres-
ponding to the thought, she turned at the sound of the
opening door. But as Sarolta entered, every emotion
was superseded in her old mistress's affectionate heart,
by the pleasure of the meeting. Sarolta was folded in the
well-remembered capacious embrace.

"Xa voUiy cette enfanty la wiW^* madame repeated,
between resounding kisses. "Is it possible? The little
Sarolta who gave me such a time of it ! "

Here she held her pupil at arm's length and her hawk's-
eyes scrutinized: "£/ avec ga, it is not the same Sarolta

THE COMPOSER 257

at all! Heavens, how changed you are — une heauUl
Ah, but where is my little prima donna?"

"I don't know," said Lady Holdfast slowly.

These were the first words she had spoken, and they
came with a smile; but the vivacious teacher had a sudden
impression of chill.

"Ugh," she said, moving toward the hearth. "What
a climate you have, you English!"

They sat opposite to each other and there fell silence.
Madame Costanza stared first at Sarolta and then at
the rosy, flame-lit logs, marshalling her conclusions:
"Dressed to perfection, even in the country. . . .
Gray tailor-made, lingerie blouse — the simplicity that
costs the eyes out of the head! And coiftel by a French
maid, for a wager. No paint. EUe ne s^amrise pas^
after the fashion of your modem 'smart.' But then
what a skin! — as fine as those pearls at ears and throat
. • • and that's not saying little! Ce pauvre Johnny,
he does not do things by halves! And how she suits
the luxurious setting! Talk of birth! She's imposing
now, positively imposing, the little Polish one, brought
up in the house of Mosenthal! And she sits and she
smiles at me, and does not even care to put the question:
What brings you? What do you want? with me? Ah,
$a, she used not to be marble. Well, Sarolta," cried
madame aloud, "I've come all this way north to pay you
a little visit, you see."

Sarolta's straight eyebrows quivered into a faint
curve of interrogation, but there was nothing lacking
in the cordiality of the words:

858 THE COMPOSER

"Oh» madame, how good of you! How delightful
for me! You have come to stay, of course? Jolmny
will be so pleased. "

"No," said madame, rather dryly, "I have not come
to stay, my dear. My fly is waiting. I take the 6:40
train back to London. You can give me a cup of tea,
by-and-by — no more. And as for — '* she hesitated on
the old familiar appellation, then corrected herself for-
mally — "as for Sir John, I hope we may meet, but I am
glad to have been able to speak to you first. Voyons,
Sarolta," she broke out, with irrepressible impatience,
"have you no desire to know what can have brought me

— me, Costanza? " — the familiar gesture indicated that
unmistakable personality — "three hundred miles north,
away from my occupations, to seek you?"

Lady Holdfast shot a swift startled look between her
long black lashes at the speaker.

"Well, I hoped," she said then, with an air of gentle
gayety that played on the surface of eye and lip — no deeper

— "that you might be taking us on your way somewhere,
and perhaps be able to stay a few days — to pay us a
Kttle visit."

"Visit! Have I time for visits? When I go to Pur-
gatory, my love, that will be my first opportunity for a
visit of pleasure. No, no; when I come to people, even
to you, my angel — it is on business. But to show how
good my manners are, we will talk a little about yourself
first. How does it go? Need I ask, eh? Sir John, the
pearl of husbands? Of course. Little ones? No
little ones! How is that possible?"

THE COMPOSER 259

"I don't know," said Sarolta. In her turn, she was
looking thoughtfully into the flames.

Madame Costanza flung another of her searching looks
at the set face; at the hands lying listlessly one across
the other. Something she knew of the story of Sarolta's
last night in Frankheim — enough for her rich imagination
to develop, after its own dramatic fashion. But whatever
trouble the past had held, the present was, surely, satis«
factory enough. After two years of prosperous married
life with an adoring young husband, Sarolta ought not
to look so strangely unlike herself. It was unnatural!
She could not reconcile the girl she had known, the way-
ward. Impulsive, eager, April-creature — with this woman
of unyouthful detachment, of coldness and apathy.

"Well," she proceeded, probing, "and are you quite
content? No hankerings after the old life? No regrets
to have exchanged the glory of the prima donna for the
majesty of the ch&telaine? Quite content to use your
voice for Uttle drawing-room songs?"

"I don't sing at all, " said Sarolta harshly. She looked
straight at Madame Costanza. A sombre gleam in the
depths of those eyes that, up to this, had held such in-
difference.

"You don't sing! What — what is this absurdity?"
the other screamed. Once again she swept her sur-
roundings with a glance of comprehensive scrutiny:

"It is true, there is no piano. Your own sitting-room,
and no piano! Ah, I felt the moment I entered there
was something wanting, and it was that! • • • What
is the meaning of this?"

260 THE COMPOSER

'' But it is quite simple. It means I don't care to sing. '*

"You — you! Do I hear aright? Is this Saiolta
speaking to me? Sarolta Vaneck, with the voice of the
century!**

Lady Holdfast's pale face grew a shade paler; but her
lips still had their freezing smile as she answered:

"You forget, madame, that Sarolta Vaneck does not
exist any more. "

**Ah bienr* exclaimed madame.

The other rose and stood looking down at her friend,
the angry fire deepening in her eyes and belying her air
of chill composure.

"Eh, what is this?" went on the genial lady. "You

are not at all dead, let me tell you, while you can look

like that. Ah, I thought you had grown into a pretty

dununy at first; but now — j*aime mieux gal Yes, yes,

she still lives, the old Sarolta. Let me tell you what is

the matter with you: you bore yoiurself, my dear; your

artist soul is pining for an outlet in all this stifling luxury

and grandeur. I come, it seems, in the very nick of time ! "

She drew herself out of her chair in her turn and, with

one of those unsurpassably dramatic gestures, produced

a telegram from her travelling-bag. She flourished the

orange envelope before Sarolta's eyes, then shook out

the pink sheet and flapped it open, tapping it with her

large white finger. "Listen — this is what I received

this morning:

*Tind Sarolta at once. Lothkab."

With a sharp movement Lady Holdfast covered her

eyes with one hand, while with the other she felt for the

THE COMPOSER £61

ledge of the chimney-piece. . • • How long ago, and
in what other lif e, was it that a girl had stood palpitating
before her teacher and heard the first message from
Lothnar, which was to mean such a rending experience!
She drew her breath stormily ; but if she had learned noth-
ing else these long two years, she had learned self-control.
"Yes, he wants you again!'' pursued Madame Cos-
tanza. **Rien que ga, ma chhe. After two years — a
pretty compliment, let me tell you! You know, of course,
about the Mourning Symphony upon which he has been
working. Comment? You do not know! Is it possible?
What kind of an existence have you condemned yourself
to, my pauvre petite? The great Symphony, the new
inspiration that has saved Lothnar's life and reason. His
Memorial to Friedhelm Reinhardt! But it is the musical
event of the age! Oh, marvels are again taking place
at Frankheim, I assure you. On this next anniversary
of his friend's death, Lothnar steps again before the world.
The Opera House is reopened, Frankheim lives again I
The Grand-Duke is enchanted. It is said that the Kaiser
has signified his intention of being present. What a
man, this Lothnar! He brings every one to his feet in
the end! You see, Germany thought she had lost one of
her glories. Eh, eh, he has made them miss him!
It is an art I never learned. But the Symphony I Loth-
nar has planned it all with the faithfulness of a woman:
such a monument to a friend! Who would have thought
he had it in him to care for any one like that? As for
the work, I am told it is unsurpassable — a tragic splen-
dour! Ah, mmst "

262 THE COMPOSER

She paused. Lady Holdfast had now placed both
hands on the high stone mantel-shelf and was leaning
her brow against them, staring into the fire. Madame
surveyed her a trifle nervously; executed for her own
satisfaction a most expressive grimace, and proc eded
in falsely confident tones:

"It is orchestral — symphonic — with a chorus of
men's voices, and one of boys', but only one solo part —
the soprano. In fine, such a singular conception that it
takes a Lothnar to carry it through All marches to
perfection. One thing only is wanting — the soprano
that will satisfy our genius. I sent him five — five!"
screamed Madame Costanza, rapidly ticking the number
oflf on her outspread hand. "They were of every colour,
to suit every conceivable taste: he would have none of
them! He has broken five hearts, not to speak of my
own — but that is a detail. . > . Then he begins to
insult me by telegram; I return the compliment. In
the end, *he will look out for himself,' says he. I reply:
*Good luckf But I say to myself: 'Wait a bit, my fine
fellow! YouTl come back to me — as usual.' That
was three months ago. And on this my little season visit
to London, what should pursue me? Another tele-
gram, re-directed from Paris — the telegram I have just
read to you: Tind Sarolta at once. Lothnar/ You
know what that means?"

There was a silence. Madame's breath came a little
quickly; she stood, reflecting anxiously upon her whilom
pupil. " She would make a fur or e, " thought she. "Her
nerves have had a chance: the repose, the country life,

THE COMPOSER 26S

the perfect material comfort — if the spirit has been
starved, the body has profited! She has become a splen-
did woman, that little overstrung Polish girl. No matter
if it has kept: silent: from such a chest the voice can only
come forth improved, or I do not know my wMier.
Come," she cried aloud, **ma beUe enfard^ you will be the
great artist once more — it need only be once. And if
you are not tempted to consent for the sake of the old
mistress who always loved you, and did her best for you —
I don't conceal from you, my child, that it means a great
deal to me if a pupil of mine has this triumph — consent
for the sake of the memory of the good man who was also
your friend. It is the only tribute you can give him;
it will be a magnificent one. "

Sarolta lifted her head slowly. She was very pale.

^* You ask the impossible," she said at last, in a colour-
less voice. "Look, madame: do you see that heap of
white ash down there? It is consumed; it is finished.
You cannot expect flame out of it any more. Well,
it is like that with me."

A moment Costanza's brown eyes dilated with a startled
expression; then she went down on her knees with her
astounding agility, and began to puff upon the heap
of ashes with an energy that made her look like some
monstrous cherub on an Italian ceiling.

"Ah!" With a scream of triumph she scrambled up
again, and caught her hostess's hands. "There is the
flame, my dear. It was red all the time, under the white."

"Red under the white," repeated Sarolta. She
snatched her hands away and flung herself upon the sofa.

264 THE COMPOSER

once more hiding her face. '^ You don't know what you
are asking of me," she whispered.

*'It cannot be that you are afraid of failing!" cried
madame» all at once at the hdght of a tempest of wrath.

Lady Holdfast shook her head. '*You are not going
to try and make me believe that your voice is gone — me,
Costanza, who have had the treatment of half the prima
donnas n the world hese twenty years! Ha, I'm glad
of that! You are afraid of your husband, perhaps? It
will annoy him. . • • "

Again the mute answer, emphatic in its denial.

**How is it possible then? Do you not want a triumph
once again, after the stupidity, the fia.sco at the Altschloss
— which was none of your fault, en parenthise — Sady
told me about it. Ho — Webel with his bright idea!
I should like to give him my opinion upon that precious
function! Such nonsense ! All Lothnar wanted was to
be left alone for a while. They could not do that. Save
us from our friends! — Wdl, come, if you won't do it for
Reinhardt's memory, or for my sake, or for your own
satisfaction, do it for Lothnar, then!"

This was a risky card to play and she knew it. But
it was her last and madame played it with a splendid
courage.

*'For Lothnar!" Lady Holdfast straightened herself,
dropped her hands from before her face. " For Lothnar, "
she repeated. "For his sake! for the sake of the man

who " She got up and approached Madame Cos-

tanza. "Do you know what that man did to me —
what he did to me? I was so young, I knew nothing —

THE COMPOSER i65

a little fool. He came like a fire across my life, and
left — nothing.

'^You asked me just now if I had children. I said
to myself: Does a dead woman have children? I was
glad to be dead: it was peace at least. Now you come,
calling me to life again — life is torture! You have
blown on the fire under the white ash, and it bums, it
bums."

Madame Costanza's large, warm, forceful clasp once
more seized upon the slender hands.

"But you wiU sing — you wiU sing!" she said.

Sarolta looked into the hawk-like eyes, devouring and
commanding, fierce in their desire. Once more she felt
herself in the grip of the Artist's ruthless egoism. So that
Art be served, what mattered the suffering, the sacrifice?
— Nay, if from the tortured soul should rise a purer
cry, was it not all gain? An overwhe ming sensation of
helplessness stole over her.

"Yes," she said, like one hypnotized, "I suppose I
shall sing. "

And out of her unexpected surrender sprang unex-
pectedly a fierce desire. Yes, she would sing — if only
once again. The red still burned under the white!

Madame drew a gasping breath of relief, plumped
down on the sofa, and drew the other beside her.

"You have given me a pretty fright!" she ejaculated.

But though "Sarolta" had thus consented, "Lady
Holdfast" had still many things to discuss, and conditions
to impose, which she did with restored calmness and a

266 THE COMPOSER

great deal of determination. She had deliberately cut
herself aloof from the artist's life; and, even with Sady,
correspondence had languished. She knew nothing,
refused to know anything of what had happened at Frank-
heim after her flight. But now she questioned. Loth-
nar had left the place, very shortly after herself, she was
now informed; had taken a sudden horror of it, had fled
to the Tyrol, where he had lived in complete seclusion,
seeing only Webel and a few other picked friends. The
little town had languished, forlorn; but the Master had
recovered what was life to him, his inspiration. The last
year the Trauer Symphonic had occupied his every thought.

"If I sing," said Sarolta, ponderingly at last, "it
must be as Sarolta Vaneck. If Dr. Lothnar has heard of
my marriage *'

"He has not!" screamed the other. "Why ma pauvre
enfarU, that monster of genius, if you think he has as
much as asked after you, or any of his singers! Bah,
with that one, it is only when you are wanted that you
are remembered!"

She spoke out of the intensity of her desire, not mean-
ing to be brutal, but at the look upon Sarolta's face she
caught herself up and went on in softer accents:

"FoyoTW, Sarolta — how could he have heard any-
thing, when in Frankheim itself not a soul knows of you
and your Sir John! Does not this very telegram prove
his ignorance?"

Lady Holdfast fixed her glance searchingly upon the
speaker's face — but madame's eyes were the mirror of^
very honest soul — then gave a little sigh;

THE COMPOSER 267

''If it is understood^ then, that my married name is not
to be brought into it, not to be made known **

''Nothing more simple, my dear. As for Lothnar,
I shall simply wire:

"'I have Sarolta. She consents.'"

"Wait a moment," said Lady Holdfast. She laid
her white hand, with its sparkling weight of rings,
upon the singing-mistress's cheerfully gesticulating arm.
"There is yet another point; I will study the part with
you, and attend one rehearsal at Frankheim before the
performance, but that is all: except for this I will not
meet Dr. Lothnar."

This was the signal for the good lady to jeter les hards
crisy what she herself would have described as "the high
cries." But Lady Holdfast was immovable. They
could have an understudy in case, at that one rehearsal,
she failed to please the composer. She would herself
pay the understudy, should there be any difficulty on the
score of money.

Madame Costanza gazed at her, pursing her lips.

There fell a silence; and in the silence, the teacher's
expressive countenance became set into lines of sadness
that were almost tragic. Frank, impulsive creature as
she was, there were unexpected delicacies and reticencies
in her nature. She never spoke of the sorrows of her own
life — neither would she seek to probe the wounds of
another. But what had Lothnar done to this child!

"You have suflFered much, mafille/* she said at last.
Her deep voice vibrated. It was as if all the passionate
grief of her own existence had awakened in i^ympathy.

268 THE COMPOSER

Thwi her unoonquerable optimism ios€ uppermost once
more:

*'But one sings none the worse for that — believe
me, " she added cheerfully.

"I knew you would tell me so/' said Sarolta, with a
little angry laugh.

Madame surveyed her again in silent reflection:
prudently she gave another turn to the conversation:

''And you really expect me to make conditions with
Lothnar? Conditions with Lothnar> jitste cielT*

"It is for him to accept or refuse/' said Sarolta. If
the composer could not trust them both sufficiently,
there was no more to be said.

"Well, well," cried the other, who had too good a
knowledge of human nature not to know when she was
beaten; and who possessed the quality, so useful in life,
to be able to fnake the best of a compromise. "He must
trust us — he shall trust us — or let him go hang!"

Then, with the glee of a child, she prepared for de-
parture.

She was sorry not to see ce bon Sir John, but she must
be back in London that night — and no doubt she would
meet him soon.

"For you will come to Paris and work? Ah, it is a
marvel, that Symphony! You will not regret it, my little
Sarolta. To bury such a talent as yours! Pity you will
not see Sady. Yes, she is in America, my love. Did
you not know? She has had a success, over there, with
her linnet notes and that winning personality of hers.
And has she told you? — No, I will not be indiscreet,

THE COMPOSER 269

but there are rumours that she and your cousin Mosen-
thal "

"What!" cried Sarolta, a gleam of mirth in her eyes,
"what, poor little Chop? . . . How dare he aspire
so high?"

"My dear, he's already a great little man, on his own.
He and Sady have been toiuring the States together.
Tut, my dear, you know no^i^ig. He has a future, I
tell you." f /,

"He has indeed, if ^lby$y cares for him^" said
Sarolta softly.

As madame was driven |litou^ the autumnal mists,
back to Chilburgh station^ she pondered deeply upon
Sarolta's attitude. "She has cut herself away from the
past as completely as she possibly can! Not even with
Sady (Sady, her little providence!) has she kept up
relations. The Mosenthals are well pensioned, I have
no doubt, but it is quite clear she has not laid eyes on
one of them since her marriage. Ah, maisy what ugly
things people must say of her, who do not know! It
is not baseness, it is not ingratitude, it is not the mean
shame of the new fine-lady for the poor relations, it is
not that she finds it more to her advantage to keep up
with a Warborough or a fat Lady Caroline . . . no,
no, it is not want of feeling — it is that she feels — too
much, la pauvre petitel It is that she is afraid of herself; it
is the sick shrinking from old association, the nausea of the
past in one who has too cruelly suflPered. Sac-A-^apierl
What then did he do to her, that monster of genius?
And she had my photograph on the writing table!"

270 THE COMPOSER

Madame G>stanza had professed herself fully confi-
dent of success with Dr. Lothnar; nevertheless it was
somewhat to her surprise that she received next day the
Master's acceptance of Sarolta's conditions — acceptance
without a single conunent. The excellent lady promptly,
however, took much pride to herself:

" He knows he can trust Costanza," she said gorgeously.

When Lady Holdfast, up in the North, read the singing
mistress's jubilant telegram, a voice within her said:
•*He knows he can trust Sarolta."

Sir John Holdfast brought his wife to Paris, with the
unalterable generosity of temper which characterized
all his dealings with her. He left his pheasants without
a murmur, and with amiable mendacity declared it was
"great larks to be in Gay Paree."

Madame Costanza, her shrewd eye upon him, wondered
many a time what lay under that still boyish affability
of demeanour. It was quite clear to her that the whole
affair was an anxiety to him. But then it seemed to her
that all his relations with Sarolta were tinged with
anxiety. There were lines about his mouth and eyes
which spoke not only of doubtful thought, but of en-
durance, of long patience.

"It is my belief," said madame to herself with pro-
found conviction, "that the yoxmg man is an angel."

As for Sarolta's voice — though the teacher grumbled
and vowed that they had terrible work in front of them,
and that she was only just in time to prevent what was
worse than murder, in her heart she was enchanted
with it.

THE COMPOSER 271

"My dear," she wrote to Sady, "it is a marvel! I
could cry out all the eyes of my head to think that any-
thing so divine has been lost to the world. "

In the early days of November Sir John and Lady
Holdfast and Madame Costanza took the road to Frank-
heim. It was arranged that Sir John was to part com-
pany with them at Stuttgart to facilitate the scheme of
Sarolta's incognito^ and that he would only rejoin his wife
after the concert.

"Oh, I say, but you won't mind my getting a ticket
and coming to hear you?" he asked wistfully, " I'd like
to hear you, you know. "

"Of course not, Johnny," she said with the sweetness
which Madame Costanza felt was such a surface thing.

"But you'll keep the secret," proceeded she, after a
pause, drawing her dark brows together. She pulled
oflE her weddmg-rmg and gave it to him. "This would
lead to questions," she said. "At Frankheim I am
Sarolta Vaneck, nothing more — you'll remember that. "

"Oh, yes, I'll remember," assured Johnny. He put
the ring in his pocket, rubbed his crisp brown head, and
looked at her dubiously; but he made no remonstrance.

"He would make the perfect husband for a pro-
fessional ! " reflected the teacher. " What a pity he should
be so rich!"

It was a very different journey from that which the
girl had taken two years before in her second-class car-
riage, under Frau Hegemann's grim guardianship. As
far as Stuttgart Lady Holdfast travelled with all the
accessories of wealth and rank: the reserved carriage, the

272 THE COMPOSER

cushions, the sable rug, the dainty tea-basket, the minis-
tration of well-trained servants, the obsequiousness of
railway officials — and above all, Johnny, Johnny
who knew the exact angle at which his wife's head liked
to rest; who knew the amount of air it was safe to admit
into the carriage; Johnny who never obtruded his person-
ality, yet had an instinct like a woman's for the precise
moment when he might be of use. It was all accepted
as a matter of course.

Once or twice Madame Costanza, though she blessed
the circumstances which facilitated her own d^ire, felt
as if she could shake the spoilt, indifferent wife.

"If Costanza had been like that!" thought the lady,
whose matrimonial experience had been stormy.

CHAPTER XXIII

Sabolta ^echanged never a word with Dr. Lothnar
on the day of the final rehearsal; he did not appear
among the singers — only took his place at the orchestral
desk. It was a dull November afternoon, and though,
after the German fashion, the theatre was well warmed,
the general impression was one of gloom and chill. At
the best of times a rehearsal is a dismal affair: the great
empty spaces that should be full of responsive hiunan
presences, the shrouded seats, the half-lighting, the
work-a-day clothes of the professionals, the strange
sounds of instruments and voices in the void that seems
to engulf without giving back

But Sarolta was not nervous — she felt singularly
mistress of herself and of the situation; a different entity
in every way from that Sarolta who had feared and hoped,
rejoiced and suffered, with such intensity.

Yet when Lothnar hurled himself into his seat with
the well-remembered headlong impetuosity; when, with-
out salutation to any one, he seized his b&ton, held a
moment's absorbed commimion with himself, swept
the orchestra with a lightning glance and then lifted his
arm — she knew that Madame Costanza had been right,
and that the old Sarolta, Sarolta the singer, was not
dead: that under the white ash the red fire still burned.

278

274 THE COMPOSER

She had a sudden sense as if life had been in abeyance
these two years; as if her heart was going to beat again
that had been so still; blood about to leap through her
veins once more. But she caught at her fiercely earned
self-control; she faced the old self with all the hardness
of the new.

'*I will not tremble and yield. I will not be his crea-
ture, his instrument to play upon. I wil hold my soul
my own, and his music that I give out I will give out
my own way.'* So she spoke to herself and fought with
herself, while that music's tragic splendour (madame
had well defined it) rose about her like the waves of a
mighty sea, beating upon every nerve and sensibility,
as the storm wind beats on the solitary moimtain-pine.

But Sarolta's strength had been gathered also in
bitterness apart, in silent endurance, in utter disillusion.
That is the strength that tells.

When she stepped quietly forward to her place, at
the appointed moment, her pulses were steady; she
knew that she would not fail.

The stage was crossed by a couple of glaring lights
that flung equally dense shadows Of deliberate purpose
she halted within the circle of those unsparing rays, and
she knew that Lothnar instantly flung his gaze upon her
with a light in his eyes that seemed almost as searching.
Then the nervous hand she knew so well measured the
slow opening notes of her sad song.

The rehearsal proceeded without a single arrest.
At its conclusion Herr Lothnar, without a word, dropped
from his high perch and disappeared.

THE COMPOSER 275

It was the useful Webel who brought news of the
Master's gratification to the waiting performers — Webel
the same self-possessed, businesslike personality as ever;
only sleeker and more prosperous looking.

^'He is satisfied," said this laconic being. And in-
stantly strained nerves relaxed, and involuntary smiles
replaced frowns of anxiety.

Madame Costanza was jubilant — but sarcastically
ejaculated the old jeer:

"Satisfied? Rien que gal'* She wondered what he
had expected! She herself had "wept like a calf," with
enthusiasm. As for her pupil, hein? What did Herr
Webel think of that voice now?

Herr Webel stiffly shook hands with Sarolta, but made
no comment.

"He has grown quite empottSI'* said madame
vindictively to her companion as they drove back to
the hotel where modestly they lodged together. "Since
he has married that smug little widow of poor Fried-
hehn "

Sarolta, who had been staring out of the window at
the familiar street scenes, turned her eyes slowly upon
the speaker.

"Has Herr Webel married Madame Reinhardt?" she
said dazedly.

A rush of overwhelming memory swept over her. . .
Once again she was kneeling by the death-bed, and
Lothnar was raging above the shrouded figure in a wrath
and a sorrow commensurate only with his own immense
personality — "Any one else would have served you as

276 THE COMPOSER

well — will serve you as well — miserable creature who
could not even keep life in his splendid frame **

The droschke rumbled and rattled, and for a while
there was silence. Then Lady Holdfast spoke again.

*'She hated me in the end» that poor woman. I never
knew why.*'

"There was a good deal of slanderous gossip talked
about you, my child," said madame sententiously. " It
is the fate of every artist." She chuckled suddenly.
"Frau Hegemann, I hear, has had a stroke and goes in
an invalid chair, speechless. There is a justice," she
added piously. Then: "And to-morrow you triumph,"
she said.

Sarolta wondered what to-morrow would bring. For
to-night she had the knowledge that she had done well —
that she had not failed in a single technical point. She
was also assured of an increased power and depth of
voice; but she knew too that she had not yielded herself
— never could she do that again! To sing sweetly, clear-
ly, correctly, with a due crescendo here and a measured
fiU there, as safely as a piece of mechanism . . .
to the rending of Lothnar's heartstrings — would that
be to triumph? Nay, that she was strong enough to
give, no more; there lay her triumph.

She smiled without replying. It was the smile that
made madame feel cold.

The theatre had been draped in purple and silver as
for a royal mourning. Lothnar's whim was law in Frank-
heim, and even the exalted personage who was to occupy

f"'

THE COMPOSER 277

the box surmounted for the occasion by the Imperial
crown had signified his approval.

It is only in this land," he was reported to have said,
that such noble ideab of friendship still exist: another
sign of the virility of my people in these days of degen-
eracy.'*

Sarolta had clothed herself in filmy draperies of black
cripe; it was a garment fashioned by the greatest house
in Paris, and the vogue of the day being for the Tanegra
effect, it was peculiarly suited to the long slender lines
of her figure. Out of the blackness the whiteness of
throat and cheek showed with the loveliness of the
magnolia flower.

** Blanche comma une Polonaiser' said Madame Cos-
tanza, surveying her critically before they started. "But
won't you put on your pearls, my daughter?'*

"Sarolta Vaneck with the pearls of Catherine of
Russia!" smiled Lady Holdfast. "That would scarce
look convincing, would it?"

"Ah, that incognitoj'* mocked madame, "it will be
the secret of Punch to-morrow all over Frankheim!"

"To-morrow I shall be gone," said Sarolta.

So it was without a jewel, the most mourning figure
conceivable, that she sat waiting apart for her call in
the artists' foyer. She had fiung a black scarf over her
head, instead of the plumed hat that madame had coim-
selled. Her hands were locked together upon her
knees. Statuesque in her sable draperies, her veiled head
crowned with a coronal of black hair, her straight
eyebrows drawn, her face set, she might have been the

278 THE COMPOSER

symbolic figure of Lothnar's whole intention; an embodied
Lament.

The other artists looked at her askance. How she had
changed, the little Sarolta!

''Say, mein Lieber^** said the chief bass to a companion,
*'what has happened there? The girl has had her stoiy
since we knew her."

The other shrugged his shoulders. " Probably her half-
dozen stories/' he answered brutally.

Then they were silent, for Webel had come into the
room, and speech was not allowed anywhere in Lothnar's
theatre once the music was started. He had a severe
glance for the delinquents, but went straight to Sarolta
and, without a word, laid a twisted note upon her lap.

She gazed at him inquiringly; without speaking, he
turned away from her.

She took up the bit of paper then, unfolded it and read:

Sarolta — Sing thou for Lothnar to-night!

The characters, unusually large and black for German
handwriting, seemed suddenly to turn to fire as she read.
Involuntarily she crushed the sheet in her hand. Some-
thing within her — whether her soul, her heart, that
imprisoned self, she knew not — fluttered like a wild
bird startled from sleep. Clenching her hand, she strove
to fight it down. Oh, it was not the old love, not any
base kindling of a now forbidden passion; it was not that
she longed for one moment of that past ecstasy; but it was
as if her own murdered youth cried out for the pity of it!
All the little Sarolta's dreams, all her soaring ambitions.

THE COMPOSER 279

the knowledge in herself of her own rare gifts, the joy
in them, the power she had had in her for a love
unutterable and encompassing — all that was lost, that
could come never again, never again! — it was the vision
of what had been and the vision of what was to be.
Sorrow rose in her like a tide, too deep for bitterness. . .

And so, when she got up and went forth, and stood
at last in her place to sing, it was not for Reinhardt
stricken in his prime that she lamented, it wtis not for
Lothnar she sang and the piercing grief of his bereaved
genius — it was for the Sarolta that had been.

The strange composition ended with the solo which was
hers to sing. As voice and orchestra fell into silence together,
Sarolta for the first time looked down at the conductor.

Lothnar's face was livid pale, and the tears were
running down it. Their eyes met: through those tears
his were flaming.

^'I shall never sing again," said Sarolta to herself, as
she swept her single curtsey toward the royal box, and
slowly withdrew — her long draperies trailing.

The foyer was crowded, and she paused on the thresh-
old hesitating, then drew back in the shadow of the
great screen that sheltered the room from stage draughts.
Unnoticed she watched the scene, waiting for her oppor-
tunity to depart. There were too many there whom she
had known, and nothing was further from her desire than
to be greeted, congratulated, or questioned. She heard
herself spoken of in many tones, high-pitched in praise
and astonishment, as Madame Costanza, like a mighty
vessel in full sail, cleaved her way through the throng.

280 THE COMPOSER

receiving and acknowledging felicitations with a magnif-
icent proprietorship.

Herr Webel, with an nnwontedly beaming counte-
nance, entered, piloting his wife — Frau Bertha, percept-
ibly plumper, increasingly self-satisfied, clad in rustling
black silk (no doubt as a tribute to the departed), but
adorned with a highly wired spray of lily of the valley,
symbolic of her new bridal state. With no detriment
to her evident content the lady had been crying: comfort-
able, easy, sentimental tears.

"Ah, yes," she cried, as Madame Costanza eflfuslvely
greeted her, "from heaven, surely, he has smiled down
upon us this night. I cannot believe but that his presence

has been among us. And so does my Conrad " She

broke off. She had caught sight of Sarolta n the shadow,
and their eyes had met across the to and fro. The Uttle
woman's colour heightened, and pursing her lips, she
turned her head away.

As if watching the doings of another world, Sarolta
marked the movement, and had a faint amusement.

But reaction, after the poignant emotion of the last
hour, was already full upon her. She felt unutterably
weary. She longed to be away from Frankheim and
Frankheimers forever. Above all she wanted to avoid
meeting the man whose face had been wet with the tears
her singing had evoked.

She made an effort to edge herself out of the room,
keeping close to the wall. But the sound of Lothnar's
name springing suddenly from different sides arrested
her.

THE COMPOSER 281

- Dr. Lothnar — where was he? Ah, the Herr Doktor
ist ja mit dem Kaiser! Yes, the Emperor had sent for
Dr. Lothnar!

Webel's smile grew broader: True, the Master was
with the Emperor. Then came the cry : " He is coming ! "
and the groups rolled apart, as diy leaves may before
a whirl of wind.

He came, striding. Dreadful it was for Sarolta that
every detail of the past connected with him should be
stamped upon her soul with such vividness. She re-
membered how she had seen him marching down the
mountain-side, his cloak flying behind him, defying the
blast. . . . Oh, those days in the little wooden house!
The inner lament awoke again: would that she were
lying as Reinhardt lay in the lonely hillside churchyard!

She would not meet Lothnar; she could not!

She made a swift movement of retreat, back to the
dusky shadow of the screen, but it was too late. That
moment's lingering, yielding to the bitterness of memory,
had lost her her chance. The mad blue eyes were upon
her. He advanced straight, disregarding calls, greetings,
even touches, with the arrogance which he alone could
make tolerable.

"With her, with her I must speak! " he was crjring. He
caught her arm and drew her into the light. *^Mit Dir!**

She made no resistance, but it seemed to her as if she
had been turned to stone. She had dreaded to see him
again, dreaded the sound of his voice, dreaded unspeak-
ably the thought of his touch; but now these things had
come upon her, and she felt — nothing.

288 THE COMPOSER

*'How can one speak/' went on the grating, harsh
accents — those accents that once had been the dearest
music in all the world to her — "with this chattering,
this clatter?'*

He grumbled into his beard, drew his brows into his
stupendous frown; then with violent movements caught
her by the arm again and dragged her back to the stage.

The place was empty save for a few scene-fitters.
The curtain was down, the only light that of a standard
at the wings. The rawness peculiar to every stage at
such a moment was obtrusive in that space which had
held the glamour of Sarolta's life.

" Away with you ! — and with every one — right away ! "
ordered Lothnar to the workmen with a wave of his arms.
Then he and Sarolta were alone.

There was silence at first between them. That gaze
of his! From the first it had had the power of reaching
her inmost self, stripping her to her very soul, breaking
down aU the natural barriers which divide one human
being from another. It was upon her now; it demanded,
it searched, it actually assaulted, but — she drew a long
sigh — it left her unreached. She was holding the secret
of her thoughts from him.

Then he spoke, both arms outflung:

"Dut ..." So he had been wont to cry out
to Reinhardt in highest, deepest recognition of creator
to interpreter. "Sarolta . . . how you have sung
my music to-night! — I trusted, and you sang. Yesterday
it was not my Sarolta, but I looked at you and I knew
that she was not lost to me — not like — like the other!

THE COMPOSER 283

That could not have been! Du! . . . How you
look at me! You have sorrow in your eyes. You sang
my sorrow as it cries out in my soul. Achy I knew it. . .
I knew it! Fate cannot fail the one who is bom to
dominate. My art cannot perish so long as you live.
You and I — you and I together, Sarolta — it goes still!
We can never be separated again, no more than the sound
from the vibrating string."

He came a step closer to her. In look and speech he
had claimed her: now that his hands were laid upon
her shoulders it was not more tangible a grasp.

"Thou, white one . . . art changed from the
little Sarolta that stood so pale, trembling before me!
Art grown strong . . . and beautiful! Dost re-
member my kiss, Sarolta? Dost remember the carna-
tions I gave thee to pin at thy breast? All blood-crimson
they were. . . . When thou and I kiss again, it
shall be a wonder of crimson."

He bent his head toward her — his breath fluttered
her hair; then his grip upon her shoidders suddenly
relaxed. He stepped back, and into the wild gleam,
into the flaming eyes, there came surprise!

"How you look at me ! " he said again. He was shaken
with a laugh. "Has Iphigenia become wise? . . ,
Has Phaedra turned prudish? Art afraid of the kiss
without the ring? Na "

From his little finger he wrenched a narrow circlet.
Perhaps it had been that with which he had plighted
himself to her who once had had golden hair and who
had grown gray before her years, and died mad. He

284 THE COMPOSER

thrust it upon SaroIta*s uniesistixig finger, where it hung
loose.

"My ring, my ring! Thou shaJt have my ring, my
name and my love — thou who hast been given me to
fulfil me. Oh, thou shalt sing through me in a voice such
as neither gods nor men have dreamed of before this!
Thou shalt be beautiful for those most beautiful whom
thou shalt reveal to the world through me. Thou shalt
be my Helen — Helen, the World's Desire. What! **

The word rang sharply loud out of the husky tender-
ness of the deep-noted, low- voiced speech which had
seemed to hang murmuringly in the air.

Sarolta had made no sound, scarcely made a move-
ment, unless the droop of the hand upon which he had
thrust his ring could so be called. But from the inert
finger the ring had slid off, bounded and rolled a little way.

"JFflw/** cried Lothnar again; from surprise the note
struck on anger.

She was already walking away from him. He made a
savage gesture to arrest her, but she turned her eyes
upon him, and he fell back. While he had made his sin-
gular declaration of love, claiming her, out of his need,
in superb egoism, her eyes had never left his face. They
had been fixed on him desperately, with a kind of agony
in them. Now she looked at him as if she knew him
no more — nay, so great was the withdrawal of her soul
that it was as if he no longer existed.

So she passed and went from him.

He stood alone in the emptiness looking after her, too
utterly confounded to have room for other sensation.

THE COMPOSER 2S5

^ Then, suddenly, as the darkness of the wing enclosed

her, it came to him that not one word had she spoken,
while he had spoken so much, offered so much! Only
by a look had she answered — and this look had oblit-
erated him from her life . . . him, Lothnar, the
compeller of souls!

Conrad Webel and a few others of the Master's closer
acquaintances were waiting in the artists' room as Sarolta
came through. Their whispered talk fell silent at sight
of her, Webel made a movement forward, but she
swept past, gazing inwardly upon her thought.

The men looked after her curiously through the door
which she left open behind her; they saw how she was met
half-way by a tall young man, who sprang forward, an
immense wrap of sable over his arm.

The unshaded light fell on his face — it was pinched
with cold and stamped with lines of anxiety. He folded
Sarolta in the cloak with careful gesture, lifted the
high collar about her throat, and gave her his arm.

*^Achy is that the way with our Iphigenia?" said he
who stood closest to Webel.

Webel looked at him blankly.

"I must find the Master," he said in a troubled voice,
and went heavily back to the stage. The first speaker
shrugged his shoulders.

"It snows," he said to the others. "Let us out!
Who's for a bowl of Gliihwein?^*

The three caught each other jovially by the arm;
but even as they started forward they were arrested by

286 THE COMPOSER

the sound of laughter — a laugh so ugly and mocking
that, involimtarily, they fell apart.

**OottI — wie das klingtl — SchauderhaftI'' cried one.
And the other answered:

"So did the Master laugh on the night at the Alt-
schloss!"

"It is snowing," said Johnny also, as he wrapped
his wife in her sables. "And, oh, Sarolta, had you no
cloak? It's lucky I thought of your furs! Not even
a hat!"

He lifted the collar tenderly round her long throat.
"Madame Costanza has gone on to the hotel; she says
she will see that tea is ready "

"Oh, Johnny!" exclaimed Sarolta; she halted in her
submissive advance; "I don't want to stay another
hour in Frankheim!"

Sir John Holdfast remained silent for an appreciable
moment, looking at his wife's white face.

"Right!" he said in his cheerful, everyday way. "I've
got a car — a stunner, she'll roll us into Stuttgart in a
jiflfy. Stuttgart's quite a decent place. We'll drop
F61icie a wire and leave Thomson at the hotel here with
a nice message for madame. He can rejoin us to-morrow,
with your luggage."

Thomson was alert at the door of the private exit, where
a great Mercedes was throbbing and purring. Without
the snow already lay white.

"Quick, darling!" warned Johnny; "mind the step.'*
He followed his wife into the car and gave his instructions

THE COMPOSER 287

through the window. Thomson saluted and walked off,
and the Mercedes slipped away into speed with the ease
of its perfect machinery.

They whirled on in silence for a little while after this.
She was staring through the blurred window. Here
was the fountain where they had lingered on the day
after the "Iphigenia" first night. It gleamed white in
the shaken light of a gas-lamp. • . . And here,
somewhere in the darkness, must be the alley where
Johnny had proposed for the seventh time. What was
it he had said? "Ton honour, it's not for myself, it's
for you! It's to take you out of all this." . . . •
And she had passed him without a word — even as just
now she had passed that other!

A trembling took her. He turned quickly:

"You've caught a chill!" he cried with a sharp anxiety
in his voice.

His arm hovered about her, but tentatively; Sarolta
was generally unresponsive to demonstrations.

"No," she said. "No — I was only thinking . , .
Johnny, you don't happen to have that ring about you?"

"Wedding-ring? Rather!"

With some f ussiness, for his heart began to beat faster,
he dived into his waistcoat pocket and produced the
circlet. Sarolta slid her ungloved hand out of the furs.

"Put it on again, please."

The young man's fingers shook as he obeyed. He had
never yet heard that note in her voice.
How cold your hands are!" she cried.
Bit of a cold night," said he simply.

888 THE COMPOSER

Like a wave it broke over her; the contrast between
the man she had loved and the man who loved her! The
contrast between the colossal egoist who had f oimd in her *
nothing but the! instrument of his art, to be cast away or
picked up again as the mood took him — and this honest
man who had waited and served so faithfully, so uncom-
plainingly; who was waiting and serving still. From
the first moment Lothnar had violated her reticences,
probed her shrinkings, rifled her most secret thoughts;
John Holdfast, even on this night, asked her not a single
question; he shrank from intruding upon a withheld
confidence with a delicacy that was almost sublime.
Ulrich Lothnar had made use of her virginal ardours, her
innocent upspring of passion, for his own ends; he who
was her husband had consecrated all his life to her,
showered on her all he possessed, and made no single
claim. Alas! what she had once given she could never
give again! There was the pity of it. He who had
moulded her as the potter moulds the clay, who had created
to his will an Iphigenia, a Fhsedra, had left her a woman
lamenting, a woman who mourned a murdered self.
Yet, if that pulse of joy was dead in her, that spontane-
ous leap of the heart to love, she had surely still some-
thing left for her husband, something deep and reverent,
something pitiful, sacred, and wifely; and, above all else,
after this realization — had she not gratitude?

The passing fiash of a lamp struck on his face, and she
noted for the first time that look of sweet and patient
endurance which had not escaped Madame Costanza;
she saw the stamp of the strained anxiety, the wistful

THE COMPOSER 289

tenderness for her! With a sudden movement she cast
herself upon his heart, crying out:

"Johnny, oh, Johnny, you are ineffably good to me!"
Then the tears came — overwhelming — and rending
sobs.

He flung his arms about her and held her tightly — afraid
to speak lest he should blunder upon a wound. . . •
Never before had she been so close to him as to give him
her tears. There crept into his heart a hope that was
exquisite.

OF THir,

SOCUETY LIJBIIA^/

/